Thread: China's new export: Illegal immigrants

TUCSON: The unforgiving terrain of the Sonoran Desert, south of here, whose searing summers and frigid winters claim hundreds of lives each year, has long been a favored avenue of entry for illegal immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries.

But in the last year, the authorities say, smugglers have increasingly capitalized on a much more lucrative business, trafficking Chinese citizens into the United States.

The number of Chinese immigrants arrested while illegally crossing the border into Arizona through the busiest smuggling corridor in the US increased tenfold in the last fiscal year, according to the United States Border Patrol in Tucson.

In fiscal 2009, 332 Chinese immigrants were caught in the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, up from 30 the previous year, Border Patrol figures showed. And in what could be a sign of a record-breaking pace for this year, agents in the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector arrested 281 Chinese immigrants from October 1 to December 31, the first quarter of the current fiscal year.

As record quantities of illegal drugs are being intercepted in Arizona, those involved in taking people and drugs across the border are increasingly concentrating on the more rewarding smuggling of Chinese immigrants, said David Jimarez, a spokesman for the Border Patrol.

Chinese immigrants commonly pay smugglers upward of $40,000 each to lead them from their homeland to the US, Jimarez said. In comparison, he said, illegal immigrants from Mexico commonly pay $1,500 to $3,000.

Chinese smugglers have traditionally used shipping containers to take immigrants through American ports, but that has subsided as container inspections have increased, Picard said. He said that several new tactics had emerged.

In the most common one, immigrants fly from Beijing to Rome, board a plane to Venezuela, fly to Mexico and work their way up to the border and into US.

In another, they travel to Cuba, fly to Mexico and travel north into US. Peter Chan, a Tucson businessman who works as an interpreter at the federal courthouse in Tucson, said most of those immigrants he spoke with were from Fujian Province, in southeast China, and had traveled across the globe to enter the US because of a lack of education and employment opportunities back home.

htt p: //economictimes.indiatimes.com/ news/international- business/Chinas-new-export-Illegal-immigrants/articleshow/5494104.cms

illegal immigration must be curbed stringently. even india is facing this situation from various nations. this is because of lack of employment opportunities in their own nation. china is harboring largest population and its people are suffering from lack of employment opportunity.

indian army must take a stand to prevent any infiltration bids from chinese counterparts because it would show our incompetence to prevent any such moves from the foreign country. in india itself we are suffering from price rise and unemployment. we cannot afford to help the illegal immigrants. government should take serious initiatives against such activities.

India has huge number of illegal immigrants coming every year and the major reason for this being corruption and improper securities at airports, railways, and waterways. We live in a peninsula and this makes it more difficult to keep a watch on what is incoming. In such a case, we are ought to have the best security along the border line. Especially around the areas of Chinese border and Bangladeshi border from where huge number of immigrants make into our country.

Chinese workers are cheap human resources and this is the main reason for the illegal immigration of Chinese people into various countries in order to search work. India should keep a strong vigil along the border line to prevent any infiltration or smuggling of people into our country.