About the author: Ko-lin Chin is an associate professor in the School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University, Newark. He is the author of "Smuggled Chinese: Clandestine Immigration to the United States" (1999), "Chinatown Gangs" (1996), "Chinese Subculture and Criminality" (1990), and coeditor of "Handbook of Organized Crime in the United States" (1994).

A year after the United States had established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic, China liberalized its immigration regulations in order to qualify for most-favored-nation status with the United States (Dowty, 1987).¹ Since 1979, tens of thousands of Chinese have legally immigrated to the United States and other countries (Seagrave, 1995). U.S. immigration quotas allow only a limited number of Chinese whose family members are U.S. citizens or who are highly educated to immigrate to or visit America (Zhou, 1992). Beginning in the late 1980s, some of those who did not have legitimate channels to enable them to immigrate, especially the Fujianese, began turning to human smugglers for help (U.S. Senate, 1992).

Smuggled Chinese arrive in the United States by land, sea, or air routes (Smith, 1997). Some travel to Mexico or Canada and then cross U.S. borders illegally (Glaberson, 1989). Others fly into major American cities via any number of transit points and make their way to their final destination (Lorch, 1992; Charasdamrong and Kheunkaew, 1992; U.S. Senate, 1992). Entering the United States by sea was an especially popular method between August 1991 and July 1993 (Zhang and Gaylord, 1996). During that time, thirty-two ships carrying as many as fifty-three hundred Chinese were found in waters near Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Australia, Singapore, Haiti, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and the United States (Kamen, 1991; Schemo, 1993; U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1993), though in the aftermath of the Golden Venture incident, the use of the sea route diminished significantly (Dunn, 1994).²

U.S. immigration officials estimated that at any given time in the early 1990s as many as four thousand Chinese were waiting in Bolivia to be shuttled to the United States by smugglers (Kinkead, 1992); several thousand more were believed to be waiting in Peru and Panama. American officials maintained that Chinese smuggling rings have connections in fifty-one countries that were either part of the transportation web or were involved in the manufacturing of fraudulent travel documents (Freedman, 1991; Kamen, 1991; Mydans, 1992). According to a senior immigration official who was interviewed in the early 1990s, "at any given time, thirty thousand Chinese are stashed away in safe houses around the world, waiting for entry" (Kinkead, 19922: 160).

Unlike Mexican illegal immigrants who enter the United States at relatively little financial cost (Cornelius, 1989), illegal Chinese immigrants reportedly must pay smugglers about $30,000 for their services (U.S. Senate, 1992). The thousands of Chinese smuggled out of their country each year make human trafficking a very lucrative business (Mooney and Zyla, 1993; Smith, 1997). One case illustrates the point: a forty-one-year-old Chinese woman convicted for human smuggling was alleged to have earned approximately $30 million during the several years of her smuggling career (Chan and Dao, 1990b). In 1992, a senior immigration official estimated that Chinese organized crime groups were making more than $1 billion a year from human smuggling operations (U.S. Senate, 1992). Others suggest that Chinese smugglers earn more -- about $3.2 billion annually -- from the human trade (Myers, 1994).

Little is known about the organizations involved in smuggling Chinese to the United States. In this chapter, I focus on the group characteristics of human smugglers, the extent of their affiliation with Chinese organized crime and street gangs, and the role of corruption in the human trade.

Research Methods

This study employs multiple research strategies, including a survey of three hundred smuggled Chinese in New York City, interviews with key informants who are familiar with the lifestyle and social problems of illegal Chinese immigrants, a field study in the Chinese immigrant community of New York City, two research trips to sending communities in China, and a systematic collection of media reports.

Group Characteristics

A smuggler I interviewed in 1994 insisted that nobody really knows how many Chinese smuggling groups exist worldwide, but she guessed that there were approximately fifty. Other estimates vary widely, from only seven or eight ("Chinese Social Worker Discusses His Observations," 1990) to as many as twenty or twenty-five (Chan, Dao, and McCoy, 1990; Burdman, 1993a). According to some observers, Chinese people-trafficking groups are well-organized, transnational criminal enterprises that are active in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, and the United States (Myers, 1992; U.S. Senate, 1992; Burdman, 1993b), but there are few empirical data to support this observation.

A smuggler I once asked to characterize a Chinese smuggling network said: "It's like a dragon. Although it's a lengthy creature, various organic parts are tightly linked." According to my subjects, a smuggling organization includes many roles:

• Big snakeheads, or arrangers/investors, often Chinese living outside China, generally invest money in a smuggling operation and oversee the entire operation but usually are not known by those being smuggled.

• Little snakeheads, or recruiters, usually live in China and work as middlemen between big snakeheads and customers; they are mainly responsible for finding and screening customers and collecting down payments.

• Transporters in China help immigrants traveling by land or sea make their way to the border or smuggling ship. Transporters based in the United States are responsible for taking smuggled immigrants from airports or seaports to safe houses.

• Corrupt Chinese government officials accept bribes in return for Chinese passports. Law enforcement authorities in many transit countries are also paid to aid the illegal Chinese immigrants entering and exiting their countries.

• Guides move illegal immigrants from one transit point to another and aid immigrants entering the United States by land or air. Crew members are employed by snakeheads to charter or work on smuggling ships.

• Enforcers, themselves mostly illegal immigrants, are hired by big snakeheads to work on the smuggling ships. They are responsible for maintaining order and for distributing food and drinking water.

• Support personnel are local people at the transit points who provide food and lodging to illegal immigrants.

• U.S.-based debt collectors are responsible for locking up illegal immigrants in safe houses until their debt is paid and for collecting smuggling fees. There are also China-based debt collectors.

According to data collected in New York City and the Fuzhou area, a close working relationship links the leaders and others in the smuggling network, especially the snakeheads in the United States and China. More often than not, all those in the smuggling ring belong to a family or an extended family or are good friends. If a smuggling group is involved in air smuggling, the group may also need someone to work as a snakehead in such transit points as Hong Kong or Thailand.

When I visited Fuzhou, I interviewed a number of people who belonged to a ring that smuggled Chinese by air. A woman in charge of a government trade unit in Fuzhou City recruited customers and procured travel documents. She interacted only with government officials who helped her obtain travel documents; her assistant dealt with customers directly, recruiting, collecting down payments, signing contracts, and so forth. She recruited a partner, a childhood friend and member of the Public Security Bureau, who was responsible for securing travel documents for the ring's clients. A female relative in Singapore acted as a transit point snakehead. She traveled to countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia to set up transit points in those countries.

The primary leader and investor in the ring, based in New York, was responsible for subcontracting with members of a Queens-based gang to keep immigrants in safe houses and collect their fees after arrival in the United States. If the fee was to be paid in China, the female snakehead's assistant in China would collect it. It was not clear to me how profits were distributed among members of the smuggling ring or how money was actually transferred from one place to another.

Most smuggling groups reportedly specialize in either air or sea smuggling. According to Zhang and Gaylord, only groups with ties to organized crime groups in Asia engaged in the complicated, large-scale operations of sea smuggling, but snakeheads involved in air smuggling may venture into sea smuggling. A thirty-two-year-old housewife from Fuzhou who left China by boat alleged that her snakehead was involved in both.

Not all smugglers are affiliated with criminal groups, Zhang and Gaylord notwithstanding. A forty-year-old male store owner from Changle described his female snakehead, who specialized in sea smuggling, as "a Taiwanese with good reputation who came to China to be a snakehead. She was involved in sea smuggling for the first time when I was recruited by her. After that, she transported several boatloads of people to the United States.... She visited Fuzhou often. After our ship arrived in Los Angeles, [her] husband and a group of people picked us up."

Some U.S. authorities are convinced that Chinese smugglers of immigrants also bring heroin from Southeast Asia into the United States (U.S. Senate, 1992). Senator William Roth Jr., the Delaware Republican who directed a Senate investigation on Asian organized crime, claimed that some human smugglers are former drug dealers (Burdman, 1993a), and there is evidence to support this view. One of the first groups of Chinese to be charged with human smuggling had previously been indicted for heroin trafficking ("INS Undercover Operation," 1985), and a Chinese American who owned a garment factory in New York City's Chinatown was charged with both heroin and human trafficking ("Chinese Merchant Arrested," 1992). Moreover, during an undercover operation, Chinese smugglers offered heroin to federal agents posing as corrupt immigration officers in exchange for travel documents (DeStefano, 1994). U.S. officials also claim that smuggled Chinese are asked by snakeheads to carry heroin into the United States, presumably to finance their illegal passage (Chan and Dao, 1990c). Mark Riordan, INS assistant officer for Hong Kong, suggested that "smugglers make even more when illegals who can't raise the fee carry heroin in exchange for their trip" (Chan and Dao, 1990a:14).

I asked my respondents whether their snakeheads asked them to carry drugs or to commit crimes to subsidize their illegal passage. Of the three hundred respondents, only one admitted he was asked by his snakehead to transport two bags of opium from the Golden Triangle (northern mountain region of Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos) to Bangkok, Thailand. None of those who left China by sea saw any illicit drugs aboard the sea vessels. It is not clear whether human smugglers are typically involved in heroin trafficking. Based on my interviews, I conclude that only a small number are.

Organized Crime, Gangs, and the Human Trade

Law enforcement and immigration officials in the United States have asserted that Chinese triads, tongs, and street gangs are involved in human smuggling (U.S. Senate, 1992)³ and claim that Hong Kong-based triads are responsible for the massive movement of undocumented Chinese to the United States via Hong Kong (Torode, 1993a). As Bolz (1995: 148) put it, "Triads have taken over the smuggling of illegal immigrants from smaller `mom and pop' organizations as an increasingly attractive alternative to drug trafficking because it promises multibillion dollar profits without the same severe penalties if caught."

There is evidence that certain triad members are involved in the human trade. One human smuggler has testified in court that a triad member in Hong Kong was involved in human smuggling (Torode, 1993b), and authorities in California are convinced that the California-based Wo Hop To triad was responsible for the arrival of eighty-five undocumented Chinese on a smuggling boat discovered near Long Beach, California in 1992 ("Many Illegal Chinese Migrants Arrived," 1992). However, no triad member or organization, either in Hong Kong or the United States, has ever been indicted for human smuggling.

U.S. authorities have also claimed that the U.S.-based tongs or community associations, especially the Fukien American Association, are active in the human trade, citing the testimony of New York City police at the 1992 U.S. Senate hearings on Asian organized crime (U.S. Senate, 1992). Leaders of the Fukien American Association, however, have denied that their organization has ever been involved in the illegal alien trade. The president of the association in 1992, labeled by journalists the "Commander-in-Chief of Illegal Smuggling," announced at a press conference that his organization "does not have control over certain individual members and therefore can not be held responsible for their illegal activities. It is unfair to blacken the name of the Fukien American Association as a whole based on the behavior of some non-member bad elements which are not under the control of the Association" (Lau, 1993: 5).

Since 1991 U.S. authorities have also asserted that Chinese and Vietnamese street gangs are involved in smuggling. After a 1991 article in the San Francisco Examiner linked Asian gangs and human trafficking (Freedman, 1991), numerous media accounts depicted Chinese gangs in New York City as collectors of smuggling payments. Gang members allegedly picked up illegal immigrants at airports or docks, kept them in safe houses, and forced them to call their relatives to make payments. For their services, gangs reportedly were paid between $1,500 and $2,000 per smuggled immigrant. None of these news articles implied that gangs were involved in transporting immigrants from China to America (Strom, 1991).

After the Golden Venture incident, U.S. immigration officials and law enforcement authorities began to view Chinese gang members not as "service providers" to smugglers but as smugglers themselves who were capable of transporting hundreds of illegal immigrants across the Pacific Ocean (Lay, 1993; Wang, 1996) and charged that the Fuk Ching gang was responsible for the Golden Venture tragedy itself (Burdman, 1993b; Faison, 1993; Gladwell and Stassen-Berger, 1993; Treaster, 1993). According to the authorities, the gang not only invested money in the purchase of the Golden Venture but also was directly involved in recruiting prospective immigrants in China.

In a crackdown on Chinese gangs, members of the White Tigers, the Green Dragons, and the Fuk Ching were indicted for transporting people from borders and coastal areas to New York City and collecting debts for human smugglers. According to court materials in a murder case involving the Fuk Ching gang, Ah Chu, a snakehead, paid a member of the Fuk Ching $500 a head to pick up five illegal immigrants near the Mexican border. Ali Chu also gave the gang member $150,000 to go to California, where he paid a group of Mexicans $500 for each illegal alien they brought in. According to the gang member, Ali Chu was not a member of the Fuk Ching but a partner or friend of the big boss, Ali Kay. The gang member also made two trips to Boston to pick up illegal aliens, transporting seven people by van from Boston to New York City on each trip. For this and for serving time in another case, Ali Kay allegedly paid him $10,000 (Superior Court of New Jersey, 1995).

At the trial, a street-level leader of the Fuk Ching acknowledged that his gang boss paid him $3,000 for transporting 130 illegal immigrants from Boston to New York in a Ryder truck, adding that his gang had smuggled 300 immigrants from China to the United States. Another Fuk Ching defendant testified that he was paid $200 to $300 a week for watching the "customers." However, no Chinese gang members, not even members of the Fuk Ching gang -- who were widely believed to be the most active in human trafficking -- were charged with transporting illegals from China to the United States. Nevertheless, U.S. authorities completed an undercover operation called Operation Sea Dragon and concluded that "a highly sophisticated, compartmentalized network of Asian gangs in different parts of the United States" was deeply involved in human smuggling (Branigin, 1996: A12.)

When asked what role Chinese gangs play in the human trade, a Chinese American immigration officer told me that in the past Chinese gangs had only collected fees for smugglers but that more recently they have been getting into the smuggling business themselves. They now "plan the trips, invest the needed capital, and collect the debt in America."

Although tongs and gangs are allegedly involved in the human trade, little is known about the nature and extent of their involvement, other than what is suggested by these anecdotal accounts. Nor is it clear whether smuggling operations are sponsored by tongs and gangs jointly or carried out by tong members and gang members on an ad hoc basis. Some observers, including some law enforcement authorities, disagree that smuggling organizations are closely linked with gangs or tongs and regard the connection as, at best, haphazard. One Hong Kong police officer claimed that "some of these people are in triads, but it isn't so organized. It's just a question of a couple of people with the wherewithal to put together a criminal scheme to smuggle illegal immigrants." (DeStefano et al., 1991: 8) Another observer concluded that "contrary to popular belief, people who deal in this business [human smuggling] are normally shop or business owners, not gang or `Mafia' members" ("Former Smuggler Claims Immigration Graft," 1994: A2).

Asked by a reporter how he was related to members of organized crime, a New York-based smuggler denied any connection between snakeheads and gang members:

What do you mean by "members of organized crime groups"? These people [debt collectors] are nothing more than a bunch of hooligans who like to bully people in Chinatown. These guys are getting out of control; they are willing to kill people for money. Yet, people like us who are in this business could not conduct our business without them. Most illegal immigrants are decent people; however, there are also some criminals. If I don't hire thugs to collect money, I may not get paid.... When the immigrants I smuggle arrive here, my debt collectors will go to the airport to pick them up and lock them up somewhere. They collect the smuggling fees, and I pay them $2,000 per immigrant. (Nyo, 1993: S4)

Willard Myers has also concluded that traditional organized crime groups such as the triads, tongs, and gangs do not dominate the human trade. In criticizing U.S. law enforcement strategies against human smuggling among the Chinese, Myers (1994: 4) suggested that "Chinese transnational criminal activity is carried out as a form of entrepreneurial activity by and among persons who are linked by language (dialect group) and lineage (ancestral birth place), who may or may not be a member or affiliate of an organization recognized by law enforcement."

The testimony of my respondents, although a limited sample, tends to support the conclusion that human smuggling is not closely associated with organized crime, as has commonly been alleged in criminological literature (Maltz, 1994). No doubt members of triads, tongs, and gangs are, to a certain extent, involved in trafficking Chinese, but I believe that their participation is neither sanctioned by nor even known to their respective organizations. Triads, tongs, and gangs are frightening terms that are often used to generate panic and can result in discrimination against ethnic and racial minorities. The "organized crime and gang" problem is perpetuated by the law enforcement community to justify greater investment in the traditional criminal justice apparatus. The media contribute to this view because organized crime and gang problems are easily sensationalized for public consumption. My data, however, suggest that the Chinese trade in human smuggling is not a form of organized crime but rather a "business" controlled by many otherwise legitimate groups, both small and large, working independently, each with its own organization, connections, methods, and routes. A smuggler once told me, "It's like a Chinese story about eight angels crossing a sea: every angel is extremely capable of achieving the goal due to her heavenly qualities." None of these groups, however, dominates or monopolizes the lucrative trade. When U.S. authorities indicted eighteen Chinese for human trafficking, they found that these defendants belonged to five smuggling groups, with several defendants belonging to more than one group (DeStefano, 1994).

I also found that, contrary to the assertions of Myers (1994), Hood (1993, 1997), and Zhang and Gaylord (1996), that immigrant smuggling is not necessarily dominated by ethnic Chinese from Taiwan but is a global business initiated by Chinese Americans of Fuzhou extraction and supported not only by Taiwanese but also by Chinese and non-Chinese in numerous transit countries. In short, the human trade is in many ways like any other legitimate international trade, except that it is illegal. Like any trade, it needs organization and planning, but it does not appear to be linked with traditional "organized crime" groups.

Government Corruption and Human Trafficking

Reasoning that China is a tightly controlled society, U.S. authorities have suspected Chinese law enforcement authorities, as well, of involvement in the smuggling of immigrants to the United States (Burdman, 1993c; Engelberg, 1994). In such a well-policed state, how could smugglers covertly transport tens of thousands of people and escape the notice of Chinese authorities (U.S. Senate, 1992.)? They must either be accepting bribes or be actively involved themselves in transporting people out of China.

An officer of the INS enforcement division told me that "people in the Fujian Public Security Bureau have to be involved in alien smuggling. They take bribes from smugglers and either turn a blind eye on illegal immigration or provide logistical support. The INS has evidence to show that Chinese law enforcement authorities are behind alien smuggling." Some of my subjects made the same point. A female immigrant who was deported back to China by Mexican authorities told me that a group of smugglers transported her and hundreds of others from Fuzhou to a seaport on Chinese military trucks. She believed that the military trucks were used by the snakeheads to avoid inspection by local authorities.

There are many legitimate channels available to Chinese citizens who wish to travel abroad -- for instance, advanced study, exported laborers, participating in an official or business delegation, visiting relatives abroad, or joining a Hong Kong or Macao tour. It is reported that Chinese government officials and government-owned travel agencies are actively facilitating the departure of a large number of Chinese immigrants through such means (Burdman, 1993c). To understand how allegedly corrupt officials might be involved in the human trade, one needs to examine the nature and operation of some of the government-sponsored labor and economic affairs organizations in the Fuzhou area.

In China, there is a fine line between illegal immigration and legally exported labor ("Is the Chinese Communist Government Sponsoring `Labor Export' to Taiwan?" 1989). In the coastal areas, there are numerous government-sponsored labor-export companies that work closely with foreign-based labor-import companies to move tens of thousands of Chinese workers overseas, mainly to Southeast Asian countries where there is a labor shortage (Kwong, 1997). It is not always clear, however, which components of their operations are legal and which are illegal, nor is it always clear whether these companies are involved in the human trade on an organizational level or whether only individual employees are involved unbeknownst to their employers.

Whatever the case, those of my subjects who left China with the aid of a labor-export company professed satisfaction with the company's services. A thirty-five-year-old computer clerk from Fuzhou told this story:

I sought help from a company, a government agency specializing in exporting labor, to leave China. The company worked along with a company in Singapore to help people leave China as laborers. When I got in touch with the company, it was agreed that I should pay the company $2,000 for a passport and an application fee. After I reached the United States, I would pay an additional $26,000. They told me it would take about seven days to get to the United States and it would be safe. After the meeting with the company, I left China within 24 days. I flew to Singapore from Fuzhou, with a Chinese passport and a Singapore visa. They were all genuine documents. After staying in Singapore for two weeks, the Singapore company provided three of us with photo-sub Singapore passports [passports on which the original holder's picture is replaced with the respondent's picture] to fly to Los Angeles via Germany.

It is possible that employees of these state-run labor-export companies are bribed by snakeheads behind the backs of company officials. A government employee from Fuzhou City said:

In China, I worked for a government agency [a labor-export company]. The main purpose of the agency was to make money by means of assisting people to go abroad as export labor. I used my position in the company to help a friend obtain tourist passports. My friend told me he was only helping his friends and relatives to immigrate. I wasn't quite sure what was he doing exactly. Later, I learned that those who left China with the passports I provided to him had attempted to go to the United States illegally via a third country. How did that happen? Well, while they were attempting to board a plane in Indonesia with fake travel documents, they were arrested and deported back to China. The Public Security Bureau investigated the case and discovered that I was the one who supplied them with the Chinese passports. They accused me of being a snakehead. My boss ordered me to quit while the investigation was going on. I had nowhere to appeal. In China, the punishment for being a snakehead is severe -- equal to the punishment for murderers and drug traffickers. After evaluating all my options, I decided to flee China.

Government employees may play another role in facilitating the illegal movement of Chinese. Since China adopted the open door policy and implemented economic reforms in the late 1970s, the government has sent many official delegations abroad to enhance international ties. Human smugglers seized the opportunity to bribe the people who decide the makeup of these official delegations. A forty-four-year-old male from Changle explained how his big snakehead got him and others included in a business delegation to the United States by writing to officials at the local government department in charge of the visit.

Reports of government employees' involvement in smuggling have also appeared in the Chinese media, as when a newspaper reported that four high-ranking Xian City officials had been convicted of trafficking in people. According to the report, the officials knowingly allowed twenty-three people from Fuzhou to leave China with official passports as members of a business delegation. The report revealed that smugglers paid the chairpersons of the city's Economic Affairs Committee and Foreign Affairs Committee about $90,000 for making the arrangement ("Xian Officials Fired," 1993). Another Chinese media account revealed that the director of the Public Security Bureau angrily denounced "some labor export companies for helping Chinese to go abroad illegally, [who] were in reality `slave traders' who were only interested in collecting a certain amount of money from the immigrants and allowed the people they helped export to run wild in the world community" (Zi, 1993: S5). In a 1997 media account, 150 officers and soldiers of the Shenzhen Border Patrol Army who were bribed by human smugglers were arrested for allowing more than 8,000 Chinese citizens to leave China illegally ("150 Members of the Shenzhen Border Patrol Army Were Arrested," 1997).

According to a number of my respondents, their snakeheads were either former or active Chinese government employees. One described his snakehead as "a government employee working as a middleman for a big snakehead who was his relative." The snakehead of another respondent "was a government official responsible for recruiting customers locally [who] referred them to his younger brother who lived abroad."

Some government officials in many transit countries are allegedly bribed by human smugglers as well, either to look the other way or to provide help to immigrants (DeStefano, 1997). When asked whether smugglers make kickbacks to immigration police in Thailand, one smuggler replied, "That's the essential part of the business" ("Former Smuggler Claims Immigration Graft," 1994: A2). One of my respondents said that public officials assisted him in Thailand. "Because we had no documents, we were arrested by the Thai police and detained for seven days. Later, our snakehead bribed the Thai officers to release us." Another respondent recalled how he passed through Thailand: "I got past Thai immigration by means of maiguan (buying checkpoint). That is, my snakehead slipped a $100 bill in my passport. A Thai immigration officer took the money, stamped my passport, and I went through."

Immigration officers in other countries were also reported to have accepted bribes from smugglers. In 1993, immigration officers in Hong Kong were involved in a bribery case concerning people trafficking (Gomez and Gilbert, 1993), and in 1995 an immigration officer stationed at the Buenos Aires airport was arrested for aiding Chinese smugglers ("Argentina Government Smashes an Alien Smuggling Ring," 1995).

Some of my respondents reported that Mexican authorities played an important role in facilitating the movement of Chinese to the United States via Mexico. A corroborating newspaper account reported an incident in which Mexican authorities, presumably after being bribed, allowed Chinese immigrants in their custody to "escape." "There were about 300 Chinese confined in a detention center in Mexicali. They were not worried at all because they had been told by their snakeheads that their Mexican guards would all `fall asleep,' after which they would be transported to the airport for deportation. One night, as predicted by the snakehead, all the guards suddenly `disappeared,' and the Chinese escaped. They all eventually crossed the border and entered the United States" ("Smuggled Chinese Escaped," 11993: A1). The Washington, D.C.-based Interagency Working Group (1995) also concluded that the trade in illegal immigrants is supported by rampant corruption among officials in various transit countries such as Belize, Panama, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic.

There is no shortage of evidence that government officials, both within China and at various transit points, help to facilitate the clandestine movement of people abroad.

NOTES

Support for this research was provided by Grant SBR 93-11114 from the National Science Foundation. The opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policies or views of the National Science Foundation.

1. I use China to refer to the People's Republic of China, and Chinese, unless otherwise indicated, to denote legal or illegal immigrants from, or citizens of, the People's Republic. Taiwan refers to the Republic of China on Taiwan, and Taiwanese refers to immigrants from, or citizens of, Taiwan.

2. Most Americans became keen observers of the plight of illegal Chinese immigrants in June 1993, when the Golden Venture, a human cargo ship with more than 260 passengers aboard, ran aground in shallow waters off a New York City beach. Eager to complete their dream journey to the United States, ten Chinese citizens drowned while attempting to swim ashore.

3. Chinese triads began as secret societies three centuries ago, formed by patriotic Chinese to fight the Qing dynasty, which they considered oppressive and corrupt. When the Qing government collapsed and the Republic of China was established in 1912, triads degenerated into criminal groups (Morgan, 1960). Most triad societies now have their headquarters in Hong Kong, but their criminal operations have no national boundaries (Booth, 1991; Black, 1992; Chin, 1995).

Tongs were established in America as self-help groups by the first wave of Chinese immigrants in the mid-nineteenth century (Dillon, 1962). Historically, tongs have been active in gambling, prostitution, extortion, and violence (Chin, 1990, 1996).

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