U.S. Tries to Stem Surge of Chinese Illegal Aliens : Smuggling: Unrest since the student massacre spurs many to flee China. Paying up to $30,000 to smugglers, they often become indentured servants in the U.S. ‘Operation Dragon’ is aimed at cracking the rings.

The frightened Chinese immigrant spoke from his Mission Viejo hospital bed in broken English.

“Who are you?” Zheng Kangxin, 32, finally managed as a telephoning reporter asked what he was doing in a van containing nine Latino immigrants, which was chased down recently in San Clemente by the U.S. Border Patrol.

Injured when he jumped from the still-moving van and tried to run, Zheng apparently was so startled by the telephone call that he bolted from his hospital bed that same night--despite doctors’ advice.

Thus he succeeded in disappearing back into a shadowy smuggling network which U.S. officials say is carrying ever-increasing numbers of Chinese into the United States.

U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service officials say that while Chinese smuggling routes are old and well-established, several factors, including the current unrest in China, are fueling the migration to America.

“If you are arrested by the (Chinese) government, it is almost a death penalty,” a Chinese pro-democracy activist, who asked to remain anonymous, told an immigration hearing Oct. 13 in Seattle about his decision to flee to the United States earlier this year. “If I leave the country, at least it is not a death penalty.”

Though exact numbers are impossible to document, INS officials say the number of major Chinese smuggling operations under their investigation, those involving large numbers of smugglers and international connections, has grown from about five a year ago to 30 this year.

INS intelligence reports indicate that the Chinese rings are operating out of Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, El Centro and Tucson, said Ron Smith, an INS anti-smuggling agent in Laguna Niguel.

On July 1, the INS in Washington launched “Operation Dragon,” aimed at cracking Chinese smuggling rings worldwide. “Operation Dragon” pools INS resources with those of other federal agencies to gather intelligence on the Chinese traffickers.

Though alien smuggling is hardly a new phenomenon, the current upward trend involving Chinese has immigration officials particularly concerned from a humanitarian standpoint, said Robert Penlon, assistant commissioner in charge of the INS anti-smuggling program.

With smugglers charging up to $30,000 to sneak an immigrant out of China, across the Pacific and into the United States, Penlon said, many of the immigrants wind up in indentured servitude. They work off their debt at manual labor or run errands for Chinese who pay the smuggling fee.

“They (employers) give them a hovel to live in and pay them next to nothing,” said Penlon, who is based in Washington.

Penlon added that the immigrants rarely complain.

“The vast majority of these people brought in are not sophisticated. They’re used to taking orders,” he said. “For them to venture out into our society, they might as well be going into the Gobi Desert.”

Other immigrants are smuggled in after relatives in the United States put up the money.

While U.S. seizure of Chinese immigrants has steadily increased in recent years, from 261 in 1987 to 318 in 1988, immigration officials say they have noticed a particular surge in the past year.

Most noticeable, officials say, has been the activity along the U.S.-Mexico border. Last year 79 illegal Chinese were captured, compared to 49 in 1982, according to Border Patrol figures.

These figures represent only a fraction of the number of Chinese actually coming across, U.S. officials say, because smugglers take great care in making sure the illegals don’t get caught. The smugglers route their charges through Mexico and Canada, where INS officials say visa entry is easier for Chinese than it is in the United States.

Chinese who are caught entering the United States illegally usually are quickly released on bond, which is routinely set at $10,000, said Ron Smith, who coordinates Chinese smuggling investigations for the INS’ Western Region headquarters in Laguna Niguel.

The bonds almost always are posted immediately, Smith said. Smith said INS intelligence reports suggest that the bonds are put up by the same Chinese syndicates that smuggle the immigrants into this country.

Once bond has been posted, immigrants generally disappear into the smuggling pipeline, Smith said. They settle in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other major cities with established Chinese communities. The vast majority, Smith and other U.S. officials said, are headed to the New York City area.

Following the June 3-4 massacre of pro-democracy students in Beijing, President Bush granted a one-year refuge to Chinese citizens who were in the United States as of June 5.

The Beijing massacre accelerated the emigration from China but did not start it, Penlon and many other immigration officials said. The pro-democracy activist apprehended in Seattle, for example, said he fled his homeland after speaking out on behalf of the pro-democracy students. The man, 34, said his name wound up on a police list as a leader in the pro-democracy movement, prompting him to run for his life.

“When they massacred the students, we felt like it was not safe to go home,” he said in his Oct. 13 immigration hearing in Seattle.

Penlon said other factors contributing to the Chinese emigration include a deteriorated economy in poorer provinces of China, as well as growing concern over the status of Hong Kong when the British colony reverts to Chinese control in 1997.

Since Hong Kong, adjacent to the mainland, has been a traditional smuggling corridor out of China, Penlon said more Chinese immigrants are trying to leave by that route while they can.

Chinese smuggling routes were first laid in the late 19th Century following passage of the Chinese Exclusion Acts, which denied entry into the United States by Chinese, who had been flooding into this country to help build railroads.

Staging areas for Chinese smuggling include Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, according to a June 29 INS memorandum. There, immigrants receive phony passports and visas and are assigned an escort to accompany them to North America.

Transit points identified in the memorandum include the Netherlands, the Dominican Republic, Belize, Guatemala and Mexico. Additionally, Nepal, Turkey, East Germany and Spain have at least once been associated with Chinese smuggling rings, the memorandum said.

In recent years, the volume and sophistication of Chinese smuggling has increased dramatically with the social disruption caused by the wars in the Indochinese peninsula, the opening of China, the uncertainty over the futures of Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the “economic seesaw” that periodically affects Chinese populations, the memorandum said.

“Indeed, the syndicates smuggling ethnic Chinese have now forged links with other ethnic groups involved in drug trafficking, criminal activities, and racketeering enterprises producing substantial illicit proceeds,” Bruce Nicholl, INS senior agent in Washington, said in the memorandum. “These alliances also extend to ‘legitimate’ businesses which utilize the smuggled aliens as an indentured work force to reap huge profits.”

Typically, Nicholl said, an immigrant must work off his debt in a restaurant or other legitimate business at below-minimum wage. The businesses, he said, are almost always run by Chinese. INS investigators have even obtained contracts, written in Chinese, between an employer and an immigrant working under indentured conditions, he said.

In New York, one employer under investigation bunked as many as a dozen immigrants in a single room, Nicholl said. “He would sleep them in shifts. The first shift would work eight hours and then sleep. The next shift would work eight hours. And then the next shift would work,” he said.

While immigration officials rely on intelligence reports to gain a general idea of how a smuggling network operates, they lack sufficient information to take action against them. That is the purpose of “Operation Dragon.”

Unlike Latino smuggling rings, which are easier to infiltrate, the Chinese syndicates have a closed nature that makes them virtually impossible to penetrate, U.S. officials say. For that reason, they say there have been only a handful of arrests involving suspected Chinese smugglers.

In one of the few successful infiltrations of a Chinese organization, an under-cover federal probe in Buffalo, N.Y., last May smashed a smuggling ring that brought Chinese aliens from Canada by hiding them in car trunks. Twenty-five people were arrested, including two suspects who officials said ran the ring.

But U.S. immigration officials say the odds that illegal immigrants will elude capture and blend into Chinese-American society are excellent.

“They disappear into the woodwork,” said Richard Sanders, a Border Patrol supervisor in El Centro, “and are never heard from again.”

ODYSSEY--Frightened Chinese immigrant begs to stay in U.S. B12