The port where they were discovered by customs officers, Dover, is a long way from Fujian province, from where experts say the illegal immigrants are most likely to have come. The peasants and unemployed along the coast of Fujian dream about migrating to the West. "To find gold, sneak out. One goes, whole family wins gold," is a common saying. For a long time, they have viewed with awe the United States, which is known in villages and towns as the "golden mountain".

Five months ago, another sinister shipment of illegal immigrants was found in the Seattle docks on the US west coast. Inside a stinking, canvas-covered container, three mainland men had died during a 16-day journey from Hong Kong aboard a cargo ship. They became so seasick inside the box that they could not eat or drink and died from malnutrition and dehydration.

Since the three men perished, there has been a crackdown by US and Canadian customs and at Hong Kong docks, where the ship and at least two others carrying illegal human loads are thought to have begun their journeys. That has forced organisers of the human cargo trade to turn to other destinations.

They now appear to be targeting Western Europe, according to experts in the field. The latest case has turned international attention to what analysts say has been an increasing growth in the flow of illegal immigration, particularly from China. "Not only has the US been experiencing increasing numbers of arrivals, Canada and Mexico are getting more as the US enforcement effort has been fortified," says Arthur Helton, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent American think-tank.

A Western immigration official based in Asia agrees, but adds that Latin America has emerged as a stopover point for illegal immigrants seeking entry into North America over the past year, and especially following authorities' targeting of shipping to the west coast.

Snakeheads have a number of constantly changing routes, stretching around the world, for getting their human cargoes to their destinations, says former Canadian government senior immigration officer Jean-Paul Delisle. As soon as law enforcement action targets one route, they are adept at quickly switching to another.

European intelligence sources estimated in the mid-1990s that as many as 800,000 mainland Chinese were waiting in "staging posts" in the former Soviet Union and its former states, such as Russia, Bulgaria and Poland, for an opportunity to migrate to Western Europe or North America. By comparison, US officials have estimated that 100,000 mainlanders illegally leave their homeland every year.

They wait for months, or even years in some cases, as the organised gangs seek to pick the right time and target destination, says Mr Delisle, who is a consultant to the Aviation Security Company (Avseco) which runs security at Chek Lap Kok airport. The route into Eastern Europe has been exploited for a long time because of lax visa requirements and easily-corrupted officials in those nations. Chinese can travel to Eastern Europe easily by air, flying into any of a number of Southeast Asian nations and, from there, on to Eastern Europe, he says.

Hong Kong's airport and container terminals have been a major transit point, with triad involvement. More than 100 illegal immigrants were found in cargo containers in Seattle and Vancouver in January, aboard ships which had passed through the SAR. Migrants holding forged documents frequently manage to elude detection at Chek Lap Kok before escaping by air, but quite a number are caught with forged documents, says Mr Delisle. Immigration Department statistics show that 1,903 people were arrested at the airport during the 1998-99 financial year for carrying fake visas or passports.

Experts speculate that the group found dead in the back of the truck in Dover had flown to Eastern Europe and travelled by road to Belgium, where they were packed into the lorry. They might have had genuine Chinese passports or forged documents, with visas to a European nation, but no papers allowing them into Britain - which is why the illegal immigrants might have resorted to their final journey.

Contributing to the belief that snakeheads are targeting Britain, the number of Chinese asylum seekers in Britain rose from 225 in October to 500 in March and 455 in April. The Asia-based Western immigration official, who would not be named, says those successfully entering Britain either immediately claim asylum or go underground into the nation's 150,000-strong Chinese community, where they work in Chinatowns.

With debts of up to US$40,000 (about HK$312,000) to pay off for their illegal voyages, the migrants are forced to work for a number of years. The lucky ones get work in restaurants where the pay is usually less than the legal wage, while the unlucky are forced into brothels, the drug business or garment sweatshops. Only when they have a brush with authorities will they lodge a claim for asylum, says the official.

However, many are not genuine refugees. Some of the young men in their early 20s found inside the containers at the Seattle docks in December lodged asylum claims based on the mainland's "one child" policy. If they were not so pathetic, their claims would be laughable - the men are not married and have no children.

In Canada, many of the Fujianese who have been detected by immigration officials have claimed asylum so they can be released and free to work. The same situation applies in the US, says Mr Delisle. "More than 90 per cent do not turn up for their refugee hearing."

The most well-known routes in the past have been to the US - most travel by sea, with a smaller number by air. Fujianese from smaller towns and the countryside and migrants from neighbouring provinces converge on the capital, Fuzhou, where they are kept in cheap hotels by local snakehead organisers. Although they have usually agreed on their destination with the gangs, the method of travel is kept secret until the last minute.

Driving the wave of illegal migration is a combination of hope, ambition and greed. Emigration from Fujian province is not a new phenomenon. The Chinese diaspora of Southeast Asia has been populated by Fujianese and Hakka migrants as well as Guangdong natives over the past couple of hundred years.

The goldfields of North America and Australia last century were another destination.

The open China of Deng Xiaoping allowed a new generation to begin slipping out the door in the 1980s. The massive outflow came to international attention on June 6, 1993, when the Golden Venture cargo ship with more than 300 illegal immigrants aboard ran aground in New York. Ten died while trying to swim ashore.

Modern immigrants from the area surrounding Fuzhou have been spurred to make the trip after seeing the wealth accumulated by relatives or neighbours in Chinatowns around the world. Often unemployed or working in labouring jobs for perhaps 100 yuan to 200 yuan (about HK$93-186) a month, they are desperate to make money.

In the village of Houyu, modern five-storey mansions with satellite dishes rise among old houses, doors locked while the owners are abroad. Elderly folk mind their grandchildren while the parents work overseas. The streets are empty of people of working age.

The phenomenon is due to the increased mobility of Chinese society, with rural workers moving into cities and those in the city imbued with an entrepreneurial desire to go elsewhere, says Mr Helton.

"I think it's desperation and hope on one hand, and on the other hand those that are organising this trade are greedy.

"There are organisations and smugglers who are motivated by profit. From time to time, these people decide to put their lives into the hands of unscrupulous smugglers, who abandon them to their fates."

Glenn Schloss (schloss@scmp.com) is a staff writer for the Post's Editorial Pages.

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Vancouver Chinese concerned over flow of migrants

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