Program #401
"Snakeheads"
Host: Charlayne Hunter-Gault
TRT: 26:40
April 17, 1996

V.O. ANNOUNCE: Principal funding for "Rights & Wrongs" has been provided by The John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Open Society Institute. Globalvision presents "Rights & Wrongs: Human Rights Television.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Hello , I'm Charlayne Hunter-Gault, and you're watching "Rights & Wrongs," the world's only television program devoted to covering global human rights issues. Our focus this week: immigration and human rights.

GINA ZACK (V.O.): We kept trying to tell them not to jump.

FIREMAN: . . . about 30 of them down there. It's kids, too, and women.

POLICEMAN: You should see this condition down here in the basement-- more horrendous than you can imagine,

YING CHAN (V.O.): and it's still the best home In America. But even this dungeon won't stop them from coming.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: This week, we begin our fourth year of bringing the world of human rights to the world's living rooms. The good news is that stories of peacemaking, conflict resolution, tolerance, and human rights heroism abound. In the coming weeks, we'll bring you many of these stories. As our program returns to the air however, the news of human rights wrongs is also mounting, from Ireland to Israel, from Chechnya to China, and to Manhattan's Chinatown. Globalvision presents "Rights & Wrongs: Human Rights Television."


CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: In its 1996 human rights report, the U.S. State Department declared the People's Republic of China guilty of widespread and well-documented human rights abuses, among them arbitrary detention, forced confessions, and torture of prisoners; coercive family planning practices; and severe restrictions on freedom of speech, assembly, religion, privacy, and worker rights. But one human rights issue affecting both China and the United States received scant mention in the report. It's a dark underside of China's current economic miracle. Poor Chinese workers smuggled into America, where they face hardships that almost defy description. The problem first hit the headlines in 1993, when a ship called the Golden Venture crashed near New York harbor. Six Chinese nationals drowned while trying to reach shore, and hundreds more were detained by U.S. authorities. The ship ran aground after circling the globe for months. Its frightened occupants, nearly 300 people, began jumping overboard in a frantic attempt to reach the shore. At the time, Gina Zack was in the U.S. Coast Guard.

GINA ZACK: It was a windy day, somewhat foggy out. We arrived on scene. There were people in the water. We shined lights. We kept trying to tell them not to jump.

JORDAN SILVER: I participated in C.P.R. As well as just trying to keep the patients warm.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): Emergency medical technician Jordan Silver was waiting on shore.

JORDAN SILVER: It was a pretty chaotic scene. There were lots of people, and a lot of people sort of running around, trying to figure out what needed to be done.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): The chaos on the beach was mirrored in the news reports. Who were these people? Survivors of a journey on what was called a slave ship. We now have the real story, revealing the existence of Chinese gangsters, known as "snakeheads," who are paid to smuggle human beings into America. The immigrants contend they were driven out of China by crackdowns against pro-democracy activists and Christians, and by a one-child-per-family birth control policy, but there's no escaping that economics is also a primary motivation. The ship-wrecked survivors were taken into custody and sent to several prisons. Nearly three years later, many remain in detention pending appeals for political asylum.

JOHN SHATTUCK: Those persons who were being held in detention had their cases very closely reviewed to see whether they have claims of asylum that they can make to come into this country, and if they do, those asylum claims are taken very seriously, and they're processed through the courts, and then many of them, in fact, do succeed in obtaining asylum.

DAVID MARTIN: Deportation can of course be a deterrent. After people have had a chance to make their claims, those who don't have a basis for remaining in the country should go home.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (V.O.): No one knows how many Chinese enter the united states illegally each year, but the American government says people- smuggling has grown to be a $3 billion-a-year industry. No Chinese official would appear on camera, but an embassy spokesman issued this statement: "We are always ready to cooperate with countries concerned about illegal immigration, and especially the United States. The Chinese government's policy is that the snakeheads that are caught and convicted should be sentenced to death."

PETER KWONG: The illegals are in fact victimized three times. First by the snakeheads, who want to use them to make a profit. They are also victimized by the Chinese government, who sees that, by exporting these people, it can help their own economy. Thirdly, it's by the American government, at this particular point, want to use them as example of to teach other people not to come here.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Coming up, we'll discuss immigration and human rights concerns with an award-winning journalist and an expert on refugee issues, but first, this report from producer John Alpert. He traveled to China's Fujon province with New York Daily News reporter Ying Chan to trace the path immigrants take to America, and to tape people- smugglers, or snakeheads, with a hidden camera. Chinese peasants pay them as much as $35,000 to reach the U.S., a country they call "golden mountain."

YING CHAN: We're going snakehead shopping. There's supposed to be a crackdown of snakeheads going on here, but everywhere you turn, you find one in five minutes.

JOHN ALPERT: Well, it actually took ten minutes to find our first snakehead.

YING CHAN: He's going to tell us what's the deal for getting someone into the United States illegally.

(speaking Chinese)

YING CHAN: He also wants to know, what do you do in the United States? Maybe his friends doesn't want to deal with whites like you...

JOHN ALPERT: Uh-huh.

YING CHAN: ...Americans like you.

JOHN ALPERT: Uh-huh. Let's tell him that I have a farm and a factory. Are you going to be able to get people in despite all the crackdown in the United States?

(speaking Chinese)

YING CHAN: "Yeah," he said. "I know about the crackdown, but we have people go in there every month."

(speaking Chinese)

YING CHAN: "and this will cost you $32,000 to $33,000."

JOHN ALPERT: Okay. All right. I understand the deal. Okay. Thank you.

YING CHAN: Even though snakeheading is supposed to be illegal, everything was out in the open.

JOHN ALPERT: So Ying, where are we going right now?

YING CHAN: To see another snakehead.

JOHN ALPERT: So every ten minutes, we're meeting a new snakehead.

YING CHAN: That's right. Just around the corner.

(speaking Chinese)

YING CHAN: "If you go to the United States, you ask around, you'll find that my brother has a very good reputation in people-smuggling.

YING CHAN: So we're dealing with a reputable snakehead.

(car horns blaring)

(speaking Chinese)

YING CHAN: $33,000.

(speaking Chinese)

YING CHAN: "First you give me $1,000 down payment."

JOHN ALPERT: Right.

(speaking Chinese)

YING CHAN: "You give me the pictures, and then, after he arrive, you pay the balance, but you've got to pay as soon as he arrive."

JOHN ALPERT: The Chinese government says it's trying to stop the snakeheads, but at this government office, we discovered the opposite.

YING CHAN: This is where we're going Labor Service Department.

JOHN ALPERT: Uh-huh.

YING CHAN: This is a state-owned enterprise.

JOHN ALPERT: We told the vice director of this government agency that we needed farm workers, but he suggested becoming partners in a people-smuggling scheme using our phony farm as a cover.

YING CHAN: Let me tell you this. It is really farm labor.

JOHN ALPERT: mm-hmm.

YING CHAN: There's not too much money for you there.

(speaking Chinese)

YING CHAN: but if it's not real farm labor, if that's only the appearance...

JOHN ALPERT: Right.

YING CHAN: ...It's a cover, then you can make a lot of money.

JOHN ALPERT: Give me an estimate per worker.

(speaking Chinese)

YING CHAN: $15,000 U.S.

JOHN ALPERT: per worker.

YING CHAN: per worker.

JOHN ALPERT: If I ...

YING CHAN: . . .to look harder for you.

JOHN ALPERT: Uh-huh, okay. Not bad. That's not bad. And they really don't have to work on my farm?

(speaking Chinese)

JOHN ALPERT: So basically they're serving as the middlemen instead of the snakeheads, right?

(speaking Chinese)

YING CHAN: He's getting a big cut. I guess the market price is $34,000.

JOHN ALPERT: He's making as much as me, or even more.

(speaking Chinese)

YING CHAN: He said, "If you want to do it, do a big group, let me tell you, because this is only once in a few years."

JOHN ALPERT: If I can come up with 100 slots, you got the money? A million and a half dollars?

(speaking Chinese)

JOHN ALPERT: What is he showing me, Ying?

YING CHAN: What he meant is that, "Look, this is our company. It's a big company. Of course we have the money."

JOHN ALPERT: It's the government.

YING CHAN: Yes.

JOHN ALPERT: Are you guys an official government organization? Mm-hmm.

YING CHAN: Good deal.

JOHN ALPERT: A million and a half bucks for 100 workers.

YING CHAN: Right, and in Hong Kong, so you don't have the report. It won't show up in your bank account.

(speaking Chinese)

YING CHAN: and I'm not going to tell the U.S. Government that I'm selling these slots.

JOHN ALPERT: No, no, and I'm not going to tell them either, okay?

(speaking Chinese)

JOHN ALPERT: All right. See you later. Thank you. All right. It's unbelievable. It's governmental snakeheading, isn't it?

YING CHAN: That's right, and they do it so openly. They can't wait for you to get into the business with them, too.

YING CHAN: You know, the United States thinks that they're going to put a stop to this. It's like putting a finger in the dike. How many people do we have here in Fujon?

YING CHAN: . . .two million, and more in the villages.

JOHN ALPERT: Uh-huh.

YING CHAN: and they're all coming.

JOHN ALPERT: And here's their destination: New York's Chinatown. Over 300 illegals come each month looking for work to pay their debt to the snakeheads, and the local police showed us where they go.

OFFICER: When the illegal immigrants are smuggled into the country, there's numerous employment agencies. If you look over here on my left, you'll see the place is packed right now.

WOMEN AT WINDOW: Yeah?

JOHN ALPERT: Are these guys coming in the country legally or illegally, most of them?

WOMAN AT WINDOW: Well, that I can't answer you.

OFFICER: The majority of the personnel here are here illegal, and they are... Were smuggled in. Right now, we're going to go to an illegal prostitution house. A lot of the illegal women that were smuggled in have to pay off their debt.

JOHN ALPERT: It takes three years of massaging to pay off the snakeheads.

OFFICER: Hi, fellas. Waiting to get your hair done? As you can see, it's not for giving haircuts. It's a massage parlor. And the person that works here also lives here, paying off a debt to the gang. You mean you never went to a barber with one of these before? A nice little steam room that somebody's in. Excuse me.

JOHN ALPERT: The snakeheads kill or torture people who don't pay their debts, so the illegal immigrants are forced to save money by accepting the most horrifying places for a home.

OFFICER: You should see this condition down here in the basement-- more horrendous than you can imagine.

POLICEMAN: There's about 30 of them down there. There's kids, too, and women you know, women and children.

JOHN ALPERT: The illegals pay $50 a month for bed space in this underground room at 86 Eldridge Street.

POLICEMAN 2: We had accommodations here for 30 people. We counted a head count of like 11 males, adult; 11 female, adult; and one male child. So 23 we had down here.

JOHN ALPERT: You live here?

YING CHAN: (Yes, earlier.) Yes.

JOHN ALPERT: How old are you?

(speaking Chinese)

BOY: nine.

JOHN ALPERT: Nine years old. And you live down here in the basement with 30 other people?

BOY: yeah.

JOHN ALPERT: Show me which is your bed, please.

BOY: It's this one.

JOHN ALPERT: This one here is your bed here?

BOY: yeah.

JOHN ALPERT: Uh-huh. And is this your mother who's going in and hiding in the other room?

(speaking Chinese)

JOHN ALPERT: Is that your mother?

BOY: yeah.

JOHN ALPERT: Uh-huh. Do you sleep in the same bed with her?

BOY: yeah.

JOHN ALPERT: How many people sleep in your bed?

BOY: two.

JOHN ALPERT: Just you and your mother.

BOY: yeah.

JOHN ALPERT: And who sleeps up here in the other bed?

(speaking Chinese)

JOHN ALPERT: . . . you do. Uh-huh. Show me where you guys take a shower and go to the bathroom, okay? What's that? Is that your bathtub?

BOY: yeah.

JOHN ALPERT: And where do you go to the bathroom?

BOY: There's a place over there in the entrance.

JOHN ALPERT: On the floor?

BOY: yeah.

JOHN ALPERT: No toilet?

BOY: no.

OFFICER: Okay, they've all got to leave, and if they have no place to go, the red cross is on their way, and red cross will find it.

(speaking Chinese)

YING CHAN: He said, "Where do you want us to go?" And "I don't want to go. I'm staying here. Where are we going to live?"

JOHN ALPERT: Only by enduring some of the worst living conditions in
New York City immigrant history can these people pay off the snakeheads.
They were actually fighting to stay in there, weren't they?

YING CHAN: They were trying to hang on until the last minute.

JOHN ALPERT: That basement doesn't seem very much like the "golden mountain" to me.

YING CHAN: Well, but even this dungeon won't stop them from coming, and it's still their best home in America.

JOHN ALPERT: Home for the Golden Venture refugees is immigration jail, And a man there, Mr. Wang, didn't know if he'd ever see his daughter again.

JOHN ALPERT: What is your name?

(speaking Chinese)

JOHN ALPERT: You left your kid behind in China? What's her name?

MR. WANG: Momo. . . . I really feel very bad. I don't know what to say.

(crying)

JOHN ALPERT: But Mr. Wang was luckier than most of the passengers on the Golden Venture. After 16 months behind bars, he was paroled for medical reasons. He was reunited with his wife and daughter, and given permission to stay in the united states 18 months later, we found the whole family working at a sweatshop on 37th street in New York City. Wang had already paid off the snakeheads, borrowed money, and gone into business. Whose factory is this, Mr. Wang?

(speaking in Chinese)

YING CHAN: "My factory."

JOHN ALPERT: What? Your factory? Yeah?

MR. WANG: yeah.

JOHN ALPERT: Really? How long has Momo been here?

(speaking Chinese)

YING CHAN: Five months.

JOHN ALPERT: five months.

MOMO: yeah.

JOHN ALPERT: Momo, you like it here? Momo working in the factory?

YING CHAN: She's... Clips the threads with this.

JOHN ALPERT: You got the whole family working here together now, huh? How many workers do you have working here normally?

(speaking Chinese)

YING CHAN: About 20 workers.

JOHN ALPERT: Show me what you're making, please.

(speaking Chinese)

JOHN ALPERT: Brooks brothers! How much do they sell that for?

YING CHAN: $148.

JOHN ALPERT: How much do you get for that?

(speaking Chinese)

YING CHAN: $15.

JOHN ALPERT: $15. So it's like... It's a 1000% markup?

YING CHAN: a lot of money.

JOHN ALPERT: To pay off the money borrowed to start their factory, the Wangs work seven days a week even though their family is already growing again.

JOHN ALPERT: Hey, Shao Yu. Do me a favor. Will you stand up for me, please? I think I noticed something.

(speaking Chinese)

JOHN ALPERT: How many months?

(speaking Chinese)

YING CHAN: eight months.

JOHN ALPERT: Eight months! Is it going to be a boy or girl?

SHAO YU: a boy.

JOHN ALPERT: boy.

(laughs)

JOHN ALPERT: You reunited with your wife, and she's pregnant.

MR. WANG: yes.

JOHN ALPERT: You brought your daughter over from China.

MR. WANG yes.

JOHN ALPERT: You opened up the factory.

MR. WANG: Yeah.

JOHN ALPERT: Uh-huh. What's the name of the factory?

MR. WANG: Common rich.

JOHN ALPERT: and you're calling your factory Common Rich Fashions.

MR. WANG: yes.

JOHN ALPERT: happy?

MR. WANG: Yeah. Very happy.

JOHN ALPERT: Very. But the family can't stop working, even if it's bad for their health. And you're still working, eight months pregnant.

(speaking Chinese)

YING CHAN: I do less now.

JOHN ALPERT: So you only work ten hours a day instead of 14.

(speaking Chinese)

SHAO YU: yeah.

JOHN ALPERT: They have no time to take Momo to school. She's supposed to be in the first grade. The long days and nights in the factory are taking their toll. At least the Wangs are in a prison of their own making. Scattered around America are 140 people from the Golden Venture still locked up in American jails.

YING CHAN: Of all the places in the world, about 40 Golden Venture people are being kept at the Kern County Jail outside Bakersfield in California. It's right there. This is Tei Po Mei. She's been locked up for almost three years.

JOHN ALPERT: Since you've come to the united states, have you seen anything besides prison walls? Have you ever been outside of jail?

(speaking Chinese)

YING CHAN: No, I've never seen anything. And for now, it's almost like life imprisonment.

JOHN ALPERT: You have a family in China?

(speaking Chinese)

JOHN ALPERT: I have two kids. If I'm here, I'll never be able to see them.

JOHN ALPERT: Tei Po, when you look down at your prison tag, what goes through your mind?

(speaking Chinese)

YING CHAN: I feel like I'll be trapped here forever. I feel like I'll never get out.

(tearfully speaking Chinese)

YING CHAN: I feel like I'm dead already.

V.O. ANNOUNCER: You are watching "Rights & Wrongs," Human Rights Television.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Joining me now to discuss human rights and immigration issues are Arthur Helton, Director of Migration Programs at the Open Society Institute, and New York Daily News reporter Ying Chan, currently a Neiman Fellow at Harvard University. And welcome to both of you. Ying Chan, you've been covering the Golden Venture case since it first happened. What's happened to the 270 refugees who were arrested when they landed?

YING CHAN: Well, about 47 has been deported.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Back to china.

YING CHAN: Back to China, right. Another, maybe about 40... 76 has been released. So they're working. They're working in sweatshops When... Some have started their own businesses. And then about 140 are still in custody.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: What about the ones who are still in detention? What are their situations?

YING CHAN: Well, basically they're just rotting in there. They have been kept there, you know, three years, almost three years, and like in Bakersfield, dozens of them were kept in maximum-security prison. There's no program, there's no visit, and no contact visit. You can't send books to them.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: So that the rights that normal prisoners have are being denied to them?

YING CHAN: Well, they have rights as much as a prisoner in a maximum-security prison enjoys, and that's the limit of it.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Arthur Helton, how does the government, any government, balance the need for having some kind of immigration control with having human rights for refugees?

ARTHUR HELTON: Well there are really two principal considerations. There has to be effective management of an immigration system, and the people of the United States and peoples of other countries insist that governments pursue those prerogatives to manage migration effectively. As well, there has to be a balance with respect to the human rights dimension, and that includes fair treatment of those who arrive and present themselves for consideration-- protection of genuine refugees.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But the argument by critics of the immigration policy is that many of these refugees are in fact economic refugees and not political refugees. Do they have a point?

ARTHUR HELTON: They have a point in as much as these are people who move for mixed motives, but remember, these individuals are coming from a country that has been determined to have widespread human rights violations, in which it's documented that there are population-control policies that sometimes are implemented zealously and even ruthlessly. So in that sense, you have a mixture of motives, and you need a fair procedure to determine which among those who are arriving are genuinely in need of protection, and who are uninvited and subject to return.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Ying Chan, in your reporting on these immigration issues, how do you see it? Is it labor law that's paramount in these, or is it immigration law? I mean, how does it break down?

YING CHAN: For the government, it's really to enforce the labor laws. Instead of blaming these people for coming in-- that drive down wages, may or may not take away jobs, you know-- the issue is really enforcing existing labor laws that's on the books. That would have a deterrent effect on illegal immigration. That would send a message, instead of blaming the victim.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Arthur Helton, America was built on immigrants coming here for reasons that many of these immigrants cite today-- fleeing religious persecution, political persecution-- but is there another dimension to it today?

ARTHUR HELTON: Well, certainly you see today concern about insecurity in the people of the united states and elsewhere, the economic insecurity that many people feel. For that reason, there certainly has been recently greater emphasis on reducing and managing immigration. But I think this is a very universal story. You look with admiration at the courage of people who make this sojourn. You respond to horror with the desperate circumstances they find themselves in, either shipboard or in sweatshops. You are compassionate for those who can assert claims to refugee protection, and yet you fear that others may come, and that it may be a lure for many thousands of others, and that's the dilemma that I think our officials and our people find themselves in.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: When you look to the future and the whole economic instability in the world, do you see this problem improving, getting any better in the near future?

ARTHUR HELTON: No. This is part of the new world disorder. You will have borders and sovereignty and states at war with individuals, human rights, claims of persecution, economic migrants. This will be very much the story over the next 25 or 30 years.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Arthur Helton and Ying Chan, thank you.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: We close with some dramatic artwork created by detainees from the Golden Venture. Cobbled together from cardboard, toilet paper, glossy magazines, and glue, it speaks to the indominability of the human spirit. I'm Charlayne Hunter-Gault. Thank you for watching "Rights & Wrongs."

REFUGEE: The U.S. Government put us in prison a long time ago now, but I cannot give up my hope, my dreams. I believe the U.S. Government can give me freedom and let me live here.

REFUGEE: Sometimes I made some paper birds so that I can express my dreams.

V.O. ANNOUNCER: Principal funding for "Rights & Wrongs" has been provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and The Open Society Institute.

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