Refugees Risked All for Chance at Better Life

Whatever the difficulties of the voyage and the hardships of a new life in a foreign land, one Chinese woman who crossed the Pacific in a filthy freighter said she thought it would be a better life.

“Even if the trip was very difficult, if I can find a job here, my suffering will be behind me,” Wen Jinyuen, 22, told the San Francisco Examiner in an interview Christmas Eve at Santa Rita Jail.

“They said life in America is very good--if you find a good job, you can make over $1,000 a month,” said Wen. “And they said there was more freedom here.”

The journey proved worse than difficult: 180 people subsisting for more than six weeks on a diet of rice, noodles and water, living in a hull of a freighter that became coated with human excrement and vomit.

For the last 10 days of the trip, passengers drank diluted sea water. Relief arrived only after the crew radioed for help eight miles off shore from San Francisco late Monday.

“A lot of people began to feel dizzy and were vomiting--all the women were vomiting,” said Wen. “We were just hoping to make it through another day, hoping we would get to America soon.”

Now, the passengers are in the custody of U.S. Immigration officials, women in Santa Rita Jail in Pleasanton, men in a Kern County facility. Immigration officials said they are the largest group of undocumented immigrants ever to attempt to land in San Francisco.

No longer is the question one of finding a job. It’s whether each of them may remain in the United States.

“I don’t regret making the trip,” Wen said. “If I’m sent back, I will go to jail.

Wen and fellow passenger Wang Yaping, 27, each borrowed $1,000 from loan sharks to make a down payment on passage to the United States. Relatives at home and New York would pay the rest.

Wen was paying 5% interest per month on her loan.

“If I can get a job, I can send money back home to pay off the loan shark. After he’s paid off, I will pay off my uncle in New York.”

Wen said she left China not only for a better life, but because she did not like her nation’s policy of allowing each couple only one child. She and her husband, a factory worker, have a 3-year-old daughter.

Wang worked most of her life of a farm, and left China and her two daughters, ages 4 and 6, without telling her husband.

“He will know I came to America sooner or later,” Wang said.