The People Trade

Smuggling people across borders is an old business, but experts see new wrinkles. More countries are sending greater numbers of migrants, more money is being made, and more established crime rings have gotten into the act. In 1997, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimated that 4 million people are smuggled annually. The revenue for smugglers in 1997 was $7 billion, up from the United Nations’ 1994 figure of approximately $3.5 billion. Many Western and Central European countries reported increased numbers of smuggling cases in the late 1990s.

FOREIGN POLICY: What is the anatomy of one of these smuggling rings? How does an illegal alien from, say, Fujian province end up working in New York City’s Chinatown?
DORIS MEISSNER: Fujian has long been the greatest source of the Chinese diaspora, so there is a history of migration and a panoply of business relationships. When Pacific fishing nations agreed in the early 1990s to limit seine fishing in the tuna industry to reduce dolphin deaths, Taiwanese fishermen had excess boat capacity that could no longer be used for fishing. Because Taiwan is close to Fujian, Chinese migrants became the new commodity.

FP: Where do these boats go?
DM: There have been a variety of routes. For a while, there was an active trade through South Africa and through Wake Island. That got shut off. Now one of the favorite routes is through Turkey and into Europe. Chinese boat traffic in the early 1990s was largely U.S.-bound. After the 1993 incident in which migrants drowned when they jumped off a ship that had run aground off Long Island, the United States became more aggressive. It enlisted U.S. intelligence resources, and the Coast Guard began cutting off traffic coming across the Pacific. A fair amount of Chinese traffic now comes through Latin America, but in much smaller groups.

FP: How much does it cost for one individual?
DM: Between $40,000 and $60,000. Families basically mortgage themselves to traffickers, with a down payment of $5,000 or $10,000. When migrants get to New York City or Los Angeles, they work for an enterprise in the traffickers’ organization to pay off the debt. If payments aren’t sufficient, the family back home is often vulnerable to pressure from the smuggling network. When it became known that the Immigration and Naturalization Service would detain adults — who therefore couldn’t work to pay off their debts — but not teenagers, we began to see more unaccompanied minors. At times, we had to detain teenagers in foster homes and shelters because they were vulnerable to "uncles" or "lawyers" trying to get them released. In the Chinese situation, smuggling is a complex enterprise that involves large payments, shipping companies, and ports of call. In the destination country, there are the lawyers and also, of course, employers. I recall a case in which an enterprise ordered a certain number per month.

FP: A lot has been reported about prostitution of East European women and girls in Western Europe.
DM: The end of the Cold War gave East Europeans freedom of movement, plus there is a lack of jobs at home. But beyond that, there is mafia activity, and alien smuggling is one of the things the mafia does. Almost all of the young women think they’re going to work as waitresses or hostesses.

FP: Or housekeepers and nannies.
DM: Exactly. They are taken by car. The most well-traveled route is through the Balkans: Albania and Macedonia into Italy is a favored route. A much more direct route through Poland and the Czech Republic has been effectively closed because the democratic governments there can root out corruption to a greater extent than the Balkan countries can.

FP: What about Northern Africa to Spain?
DM: That’s another important route. But in terms of money, organizational sophistication, and abusive practices, the Chinese and East European traffickers are the most flagrant examples of human smuggling.