Smugglers exploit hole in port security

In the recent Seattle case, the container holding its illicit human cargo had been marked for inspection because it was found to be suspiciously light. But the people cooped up inside had broken out, and they might well have slipped over the fence if they hadn't been discovered by an unarmed security guard and a truck driver.

Their stories have yet to be told, but they most likely paid about $50,000 each to smugglers known in China as "snakeheads."

In a report for the US Justice Department, Sheldon Zhang of San Diego State University and Ko-lin Chin of Rutgers University noted that smugglers have been able to develop extensive global networks and transport Chinese nationals around the world, with the US as the most sought-after destination. "At any given time," they wrote, "thirty thousand Chinese are stashed away in safe houses around the world, waiting for entry."

The number of Chinese wanting to enter the US has gone up steadily since diplomatic relations with China were established in 1978. That trend grew with the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, and then the transition to a state- controlled market economy.

"Emigration from China has been very strong, and if anything it's accelerated since the 1980s," says C.N. Le, who chairs the Asian and Asian American Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

"Here in the US, not only are there a lot of economic opportunities, but there is an entire network and structure of other Chinese who have emigrated before them," says Dr. Le. "In numbers comes strength." After Hispanics, Chinese are the second-largest ethnic minority in the US - many of them from the coastal provinces of Fujian, Zhejiang, and Guangdong.

US and Chinese officials have worked together to stem human smuggling. In US district court in New York last month, Cheng Chui Ping - known as "the Mother of All Snakeheads" - was sentenced to 35 years in prison for leading an international immigrant-smuggling ring that had brought as many as 3,000 illegals from China into the US, collecting more than $40 million in the process.

US and Chinese officials are working out the details of an agreement to return some 39,000 Chinese nationals now in the US illegally.

Meanwhile, proposals in the US House and Senate would increase security for about 8,500 foreign vessels that together make more than 55,000 US port calls every year. These range from strategic port security planning by the Department of Homeland Security to such specifics as mechanical seals on containers and secure identification for port workers.

"America's cargo ports, large and small, are on the front lines of the war against terrorism," Sen. Susan Collins (R) of Maine, who chairs the Committee on Homeland Security, said in a statement.

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