Changes in Fujian Human Smuggling Patterns

UNCLAS GUANGZHOU 000450

SIPDIS

STATE FOR EAP/CM AND DRL
USDA FOR FAS/ITP AND FAS/FAA
USDOC FOR 4420/ITA/MAC/MCQUEEN
USPACOM FOR FPA

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PHUM KTIP PGOV SOCI ECON CH
SUBJECT: Changes in Fujian Human Smuggling Patterns

REF: 05 Guangzhou 32942

(U) This document is sensitive but unclassified. Please protect
accordingly.


1. (SBU) SUMMARY: Fujian Border Control Police told the Consul
General that that the number of cases of human smuggling to the
United States via sea has fallen. Human smuggling out of Fujian
Province has increasingly involved traveling directly to the United
States with legitimate visas or travel through third countries to
Mexico, where Fujianese then cross the border. END SUMMARY


2. (U) The Consul General and Consulate staff met with Chen Hao,
Deputy Chief of Staff of Fujian Border Control Department on March
27th to discuss recent trends in human smuggling in Fujian Province.
This meeting was a follow-up to a discussion held in December

2005.


3. (U) Chen told the Consul General that his Division did not
distinguish between human trafficking and human smuggling crimes in
its investigations, a statement that was similar to one made by the
Director General during the 2005 meeting (reftel); then, as now,
human smuggling was viewed as an "illegal border crossing."


4. (U) Chen introduced examples of recent human smuggling trends in
Fujian. He proudly noted that there had not been a case of human
smuggling to the United States by sea since 2005. While his
Division discovered 13 cases involving 253 people in 2000, it has
not encountered additional cases since. Chen attributed this
decline to rapid economic development, the local government's public
awareness and enforcement campaign, and a change in people's
attitudes in response to the Golden Venture tragedy at Rockaway
Beach, NY in 1999. In its place, Chen remarked, a new method of
smuggling has arisen.


5. (U) Increasingly, the preferred method is to acquire legitimate
visas for direct entry to the U.S. or to transit through third
countries to reach Mexico and eventually cross the U.S.-Mexican
border. In the latter case, the most common transit countries are
Russia, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, and South Africa. Chen said
that although more expensive than smuggling by sea, this appeal of
this method was the relative lack of danger. The price for this
smuggling method was between seventy and eighty thousand dollars per
person, though the "snakehead" or smuggler only netted ten thousand
dollars as much of the money was needed to pay bribes and other
smuggling costs. Chen claimed that the smuggler only received the
money if the smuggled person actually reached the United States.


6. (U) Chen said that many people in Fuzhou's Changle District,
which is a well known source of illegal immigration into the States,
are now opening businesses such as steel or textile factories. Some
even have returned from the States to their hometown to take
advantage of China's rapidly developing economy. As a result, he
said, emigration from Changle has dropped.


7. (U) Chen took note of other recent developments, such as a shift
from Japan to South Korea as a destination point for smuggling and a
decline in the number of Fujianese men smuggled to work on Taiwanese
fishing boats. By contrast, Taiwan still remains a common
destination for mainland women forced to work in the island's sex
industry. These women have been deceived by smugglers and come from
all over China, though very few are from Fujian. According to Chen,
there were once over 20,000 mainland women forced into prostitutes
and subsequently detained in Taiwan. All of them had been
repatriated to the mainland by the end of February this year.
Fujian's border control police are responsible for receiving these
women by boat. The police treat them as victims of human smuggling
and help them return home. Chen confessed they did not - or were
unable to - provide psychological counseling to them due to the
shortage of qualified staff. Only women who repeatedly smuggle
themselves into Taiwan will face administrative or criminal penalty.
The threshold is three illegal border crossings a year.

GOLDBERG