*EPF405 10/05/00
Traveling Illegally to the United States Risky by Air, Sea or Land
(Second of a series on Chinese illegal alien smuggling) (1800)
By Jane Morse
Washington File Writer

Introduction: Each year, thousands of Chinese pay criminals known as "snakeheads" tens of thousands of dollars for a chance to illegally enter the United States with the dream of making their "fortunes."

They endure long, difficult voyages, months in hiding, beatings at the hands of snakehead "enforcers." When they get to the United States, they find themselves trapped by debt and their illegal status.

Many never escape.

This is the second of a series of articles, provided by the State Department's Office of International Information Programs, that examines their plight.

Whether by Air, Sea or Land, Traveling Illegally to the United States Is Risky

Smuggling Chinese to the United States is a billion-dollar-a-year criminal enterprise, according to some experts. Most smugglers, or "snakeheads," use methods involving some combination of air, land, and sea travel to move illegal immigrants to the United States. But there are serious risks involved in each mode of travel.

By Air

Direct flights to the United States are in the highest demand among would-be illegal immigrants. This method for smuggling humans is fast and comfortable, but it is also the most risky in terms of being detected by U.S. authorities.

According to Ko-lin Chin, author of "Smuggled Chinese: Clandestine Immigration to the United States," 64 percent of the 300 illegal immigrants he interviewed who flew directly into the United States were detected by U.S. authorities at their point of entry.

In an interview with the Washington File, Chin said: "People are demanding that the snakeheads provide them this type of service," noting that migrants are reluctant to travel through third countries and spend weeks or months hiding in "safe houses" before they can be moved on to the United States.

But passports and visas for air travel are hard to come by, Chin said. "The majority of the snakeheads still will have to bring Chinese into the United States through a third country," he said, and most illegal immigrants end up using some combination of air, sea and land travel.

According to Kyle Hutchins, acting director of the Anti-Smuggling Unit at the Washington, D.C. headquarters for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, flying into a third-country in no way allows for a quicker entry into the United States. A lot of time can be involved in waiting for an opportune time to complete the last leg of the journey into the United States, he said in an interview with the Washington File. "We've apprehended Chinese who are fluent in Spanish from waiting to come north," he said of illegal immigrants who spend time in Latin America.

Hutchins observed that some Chinese flying directly into the United States plan to be apprehended by U.S. authorities with the idea that they will then apply for asylum or refugee status.

But U.S. policy is stringent. Claims of persecution must be based on at least one of five international recognized grounds: race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, INS guidelines say. According to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, only 18 percent of asylums claims made by Chinese immigrants based on fear of persecution in the home country were approved in Fiscal Year 1999.

By Sea

Smuggling Chinese illegal immigrants via dangerously decrepit fishing vessels seems to have subsided, thanks to cooperative efforts between the United States and China, says Doris Meissner, commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).

In a speech she gave in Fuzhou July 6, Meissner said that the "dramatic decline" in the number of smuggling vessels intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard in the year 2000 was "the best measure of how effective our cooperative efforts have been" and an "extremely positive change." Indeed, the U.S. Coast Guard reports only two interdictions so far in the year 2000 compared to hundreds in previous years.

According to Commander Chris Carter, head of the Coast Guard Migrant Interdiction Division in Washington, D.C., the smugglers -- more popularly known as "snakeheads" -- usually obtain decrepit fishing vessels that are barely capable of a single one-way trip across the ocean. During an interview with The Washington File, he recalled with some irony that "We've had cases where the snakeheads, stuck in inoperable vessels, have called the Coast Guard for assistance."

In other instances, the snakeheads prefer to sink the ship, passengers and all, rather than allow the Coast Guard to catch them.

"We had a case that once they (the snakeheads) realized we had authority to come on board, they opened up the sea cocks and got off the vessel, leaving all the migrants on board. They were prepared to sink the vessel with all of those people without life rafts," Carter said. (Coast Guard personnel, however, boarded the ship, closed the sea cocks, and prevented the vessel from sinking.)

Carter noted that these "rust buckets" are not equipped to carry large numbers of passengers for any period of time -- and the average time it takes for such vessels to ply their way across the ocean is easily two months or more.

"They have very limited water, very limited sanitary arrangements. They (the migrants) are simply living in their own filth. And due to the crowded, terrible conditions, it's not unusual for there to be tuberculosis and diseases of that nature among the passengers," he said. The migrants, he added, are vulnerable to abuse at the hands of the smugglers as well as other passengers.

Not only do the illegal immigrants on these retired fishing vessels suffer terribly, they risk dying en route.

"We don't find bodies, because they throw them overboard," Carter said. "But we'll be told (by surviving interdicted migrants) 'We threw away a dozen people.' It's the norm to get reports that some of the migrants perish. It's a long, difficult voyage."

"It's entirely possible that entire vessels have sunk," Carter said.

Ko-lin Chin, associate professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, documented the horrors involved in smuggling by sea in his book, "Smuggled Chinese: Clandestine Immigration to the United States," for which he interviewed 300 illegal aliens. These days, he told The Washington File during an interview, "The majority of the would-be migrants have become aware of the risks involved with sea smuggling."

Indeed, smuggling by sea has become downright unfashionable, according to Peter Kwong, chair of the Asian American Studies Program at Hunter College in New York. He has interviewed hundreds of Chinese living legally and illegally in the United States for his book, "Forbidden Workers: Illegal Chinese Immigrants and American Labor."

"The ships are the 'low end,'" he told The Washington File. "In fact, when I talk to the illegals, if I even contemplate asking if they came by boat, they get very outraged. It's an insult. It becomes a status thing."

Although Coast Guard interdictions of ships used exclusively for smuggling have dropped off for now, illegal immigrants are still being smuggled across the oceans in containers loaded onto commercial freighters.

According to figures provided by the INS, 303 illegal immigrants were apprehended sealed inside shipping containers between February 1999 and April 2000. In one especially tragic incident involving the freighter Cape May in January 2000, three illegal immigrants died.

By Land

Horror stories are widely publicized about illegal aliens who attempt to directly enter the United States by boat, but there is plenty of danger awaiting those who attempt to illegally enter the United States by land, especially along the more than 2000-mile-long U.S. border with Mexico.

According to figures provided by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), 310 migrants died along the southern U.S. border between October 1, 1999 and August 22, 2000. The leading causes of death are heat exposure and drowning. The INS has become so alarmed at the rising death rate that it is producing and distributing films to warn would-be illegal immigrants of the harsh natural obstacles facing them.

Because the United States has doubled the number of patrol agents, illegal immigrants look for ever more remote areas along the border in an attempt to enter the United States undetected.

Deserts that take days to cross, are examples. But with few landmarks and unable to carry enough water, the immigrants often become lost and overtaken by exhaustion and dehydration. U.S. Border Patrol agents rescued more than 2,000 people in Fiscal Year 2000.

Says Glen Payne, an officer with the U.S. Border Patrol: "Even though we have the experience, the knowledge and the equipment to work a desert rescue, and we take great gratification in the saving of lives, we would hope that the people would understand that whenever they go into the desert, they're taking their lives into their own hands. They're at great risk of dying, and that we may not be able to get there in time."

Rivers, too, pose huge risks. The Rio Grande River, which runs for 1,885 miles (3033 km), forms much of the U.S.-Mexico border. In many areas, it has swift currents that have proven deadly for illegal immigrants.

Other dangers come from drug smugglers and bandits that haunt the border areas. The INS reported 16 homicides involving illegal immigrants along border areas for Fiscal Year 2000.

U.S. ranchers located along the border have become increasingly irritated with the onslaught of illegal immigrants who damage their property by doing things such as cutting fences or slaughtering cattle for food. The U.S. Border Patrol has documented more than 30 cases in the last year involving residents of the state of Arizona who detained illegal immigrants until proper INS authorities could arrive.

And even though some American residents in the border areas are sympathetic to the sufferings of illegal immigrants, U.S. law prohibits harboring or transporting undocumented migrants. Violators can be imprisoned for up to 10 years for each smuggled immigrant.

While most of the illegal immigrants apprehended along the U.S. southern border are Hispanic, 250 Chinese were caught in 1999, according to the INS. Another 250 Chinese were apprehended the same year along the U.S. border with Canada.

Of the 300 illegal Chinese immigrants U.S. scholar Ko-lin Chin interviewed for his book "Smuggled Chinese," most were transported out of China by plane or by boat to Central or South America and later brought into the United States overland by Mexican smugglers.

According to INS authorities, smugglers don't understand or care about the dangers facing their clients.

"The human cost exacted by the smuggling trade is staggering and continues to climb," the INS Commissioner Doris Meissner has said. "These smugglers care about only one thing -- money."

Next: What Illegal Chinese Immigrants Find at "The Mountain of Gold."

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