China bleeds into the Pacific

Hundreds of people are

paying US$2O,OOO to US$3O,OOO a head to “Snake head” gangs for a place on dozens of battered old boats which hopefully set sail across the Pacific for America.

Those that are known about are ending up in Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and Australia. Others have aimed for New Caledonia and New Zealand.

What is not known is how many people are either making it unnoticed into these countries - or are disappearing into the Pacific’s depths as the boats sink.

The US Immigration and Naturalization Service suspect that as many as 4000 ille

gal migrants might

this northern summer head towards Guam.

“Snakehead gangs” are triads who spe cialise in illegal migrants while captains of the boats involved term their cargoes “walk

ing fish”.

Several hundred Chinese have been picked up in Guam or on boats nearby by the US Coast Guard.

In Guam US law applies and the migrants have been allowed to claim polit ical refugee status - sparking protracted

hearings.

In the last couple of months Washington has adopted a new tactic of picking up the growing numbers to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) which has its own immigration laws and no

refugee status.

Last month there were over 500 Chinese being held in a tent city on a former US World War II base on Tinian Island - the island which saw the nuclear attacks on Japan launched from in 1945.

Just over 100 were repatriated last month while the others sit out the process.

In Guam the first of a series of trials are underway into the human smuggling and at one, a witness identified only as “Mr Chen” said he felt threatened by one of the key organisers, one Xi Dong Li.

Chen quoted Xi as telling him, “No mat ter where you go either on Guam or in the

States we will find you; you or your fami ly will pay.”

CNMI House committee on labour and immigration chairman Herman Palacios has warned that until the syndicates that smuggle the migrants to Guam are dis mantled, the so-called flood into the Marianas would continue.

In May, Guam Senator Mark Forbes says alien smuggling back in 1997 involved only individuals and not boat loads which Mariana islands are seeing now. “From what I’ve been told, because the Snakeheads were in operation in the CNMI, they had the chance to witness the evacuation of Kurdish refugees that went through Guam,” he said.

The Kurdish operation had given the gangs the idea of transporting Chinese illegal aliens to Guam to escape the crack down on illegal aliens initiated then by the CNMI government.

Since 1997, the senator said small fish

ing vessels coming from Saipan started

bringing in illegal aliens into coves and other points of entry to Guam.

The smugglers sometimes stopped over Rota either to transfer to another vessel or to pick up some more aliens.

Starting May of last year, however, the smugglers changed their mode of opera tion by operating larger vessels coming directly from Fujian Province.

Forbes said it is cheaper for the human smugglers to sneak Chinese into Guam than anywhere in the US west coast.

“It’s cheaper because they won’t need a larger and more seaworthy vessel to smug gle the aliens. It’s also more practical because enforcement on Guam is so much less than enforcement in the mainland.”

It is suspected that the increased US enforcement, including more Coast Guard patrols, are now forcing the Chinese to divert toward the South Pacific - aiming at Australia, New Zealand and New Caledonia.

Adding to CNMI’s woes over 1500 Filipinos who lived and worked in their

once thriving garment industry on Saipan

are now calling for the right to stay. ■