Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 21, 1993 TAG: 9302210133
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: BEIJING LENGTH: Medium
CHINESE WAVE OF IMMIGRANTS WORRIES OFFICIALS
The interception this month of more than 500 Chinese on a foundering freighter that was smuggling them to the United States was just a small slice of a rapidly growing problem that has alarmed and overwhelmed U.S. officials.While the plight of Haitians, Mexicans and other Latin Americans entering the United States illegally has drawn much attention in recent years, China has quietly and quickly become the fastest-growing source of illegal immigrants to America, officials at the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service say.
The INS estimates that tens of thousands of Chinese illegally enter the United States each year; U.S. diplomatic sources in China and Hong Kong say the annual total may be as large as 100,000. That is three times the number of legal Chinese immigrants to the United States last year.
"We're struggling with our inability to stop this burgeoning flow from a country with such a huge population," said John F. Shaw, the INS assistant commissioner for investigations.
"We don't have the funds or resources to deal with this surge."
The 527 Chinese found aboard the East Wood, a Panamanian-registered freighter, have been detained at a U.S. defense facility on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The U.S. Coast Guard first located the freighter Feb. 3 about 1,500 miles southwest of Hawaii.
Each of the detained Chinese had paid as much as 10 percent of a total fare as large as $30,000 for what turned out to be a miserable and dangerous six weeks at sea with inadequate facilities, food and water. The ship's crew reportedly preyed on the female passengers for sex.
Even if they had made it to the United States without detection, many likely faced a life of indentured servants paying off their debts to the international gangs believed making hundreds of millions of dollars from this modern-day form of human trafficking.
Only a small percentage of the illegal immigrants from China are caught. Few of them are sent back home - none last year, in fact.
Instead, those captured by the United States often have ended up at large in the United States for years. That's because of an extreme shortage of detention space, the lengthy U.S. process for seeking political asylum and the Bush administration's unwillingness to deport mainland Chinese following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
INS officials are particularly worried about a sudden shift in the pattern of illegal immigration from China. Until recently, most illegal Chinese immigrants entered the United States by plane or land.
But while about 10,000 mainland Chinese still try to enter the country just through New York's Kennedy Airport each year, more and more are coming in large groups on ships hired in Hong Kong and Bangkok, Thailand, by Chinese "triads," or worldwide organized crime societies.
Once in the United States, many of the illegal immigrants are forced to serve the racketeers in prostitution, drug and gambling operations to pay off their debt to the smugglers.
The ships started coming in late 1991. Since then, INS officials say, they have intercepted 11 boatloads of illegal Chinese immigrants in or near U.S. waters.
They know of at least 10 other vessels they missed.
Moreover, INS intelligence reports indicate that about two dozen more ships are being readied near Hong Kong and Bangkok to transport mainland Chinese to the United States, said Verne Jervis, an INS spokesman in Washington.
The first five ships caught by the INS were relatively small, with less than 100 passengers aboard. But as the gangs found big profits in human cargo, larger ships have been employed.
"We were already swamped, but this phenomenon of a large number of illegals on a single boatload just overwhelms us," Shaw said.