Friday, August 13,
1999 How we have become a favourite for
'snakeheads' Poor Chinese villages depend
on money sent back by migrants
David Rennie The Daily
Telegraph
BEIJING - The arrival of 130 illegal Chinese immigrants on a
deserted, rocky beach in the Queen Charlotte Islands has raised
fears that Canada is now a prime target for gangs of people
smugglers, known as "snakeheads."
The Chinese gangs charge up to $70,000 to smuggle people to the
West, where accomplices arrange jobs in restaurants, brothels and
sweatshops. Most fly to the West with false or stolen papers. Others
risk drowning, starvation and pirates by sailing to Sydney or Tokyo.
The United States immigration service has reported ''a surge of
unprecedented magnitude'' in illegal arrivals on the Pacific island
of Guam, which smugglers portray as a gateway to mainland America.
So many were intercepted this year that authorities have turned a
Second World War airfield into a detention camp on the nearby
Mariana islands.
Boatloads more turned up in Australia, lured by false promises of
jobs at the Sydney Olympic Games, or a millennium amnesty for
illegal immigrants. New Zealand recently rushed a bill through
parliament allowing for the indefinite detention of illegal
immigrants.
China has now launched a crackdown on the snakeheads. But in the
coastal villages of southeastern China's Fujian province, a building
boom is testament to the thousands more who successfully escape to
the West.
Huge new houses, churches and temples have been built with money
sent back from overseas, their show-off turrets or Chinese pagoda
roofs towering above the brick huts of the less fortunate. Farmland
is shrinking as crops are replaced by yet more mansions. Few new
businesses are created by the remittance money, and drug use is on
the rise.
Jinfeng, near the provincial capital, Fuzhou, has a "widows'
village" where it is said all the men have left for America. In
nearby Houyu, four-fifths of the population have left in the past
decade.
In Yangyu village, Mr. Lin, the father of a waitress working
illegally in London, told how his son was beaten to death by
paramilitary police three years ago en route to Japan by boat. But
the old man proudly showed off Yangyu's mariners' temple, newly
restored in thanks for keeping emigrants safe on the high seas.
Inside, an honour board records donations, all in U.S. dollars and
all from illegal migrants to America.
One of the few young men to be seen in Houyu had already been
caught once, as he tried to fly to America via Hong Kong. The trip
cost $70,000, he said. Only another attempt could clear his debts.
"I'm just waiting for my second chance," said the 30-year-old.
RELATED SITES:
(Each link opens a new window)
Citizenship and Immigration Canada
The brand-new white paper on immigration policy
Statistics Canada: Immigration and
Citizenship
Statistics from the 1996 national census that look at where
Canadians came from.
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