Immigration to the U.S.

Just months before Hu Jin Tao's visit to Seattle and D.C., this is very interesting leader buried in the NY Times. A container was found to be 'too light' at the Seattle's Harbor Island port terminal. It's cargo: 18 Chinese men and 4 Chinese women. Oh yeah, and inside the container were also water bottles, food, blankets, and toilets. Some load!

The term for those who smuggle humans from Asia are called 'snakeheads', this of course is different than those from Central and South America called 'coyotes'. (There's a great book by Ted Conover by that name.)
The Seattle Times reported that these 'snakeheads' can make $30,000 to $60,000 per head. Not too cheap, especially when converted into RMB ~250,000 or 500,000. These were people with some money, equivelant to China's middle to upper middle class. The 22 individuals spent 15 DAYS in the container. Geez, I get restless after 15 HOURS in Northwest's coach class...

Regardless of money or method, they're in Seattle. Now what to do with them? Well, the Seattle Times article concludes: "The 22 stowaways have a few options regarding their future in this country. With stowaways, the government can invoke immediate removal.

The immigrants can also seek asylum, in which they would need to establish a credible fear of returning to their home country.

"If they have relatives in the U.S., then they [the relatives] can petition for them to remain here in the U.S.," Milne said. "They may also be held as material witnesses in a criminal human-smuggling operation."

After this hoopla, I'm guessing they have a credible fear of returning to China. In an interesting power-play, Bush could toy with giving them immunity. This, of course, would infuriate Hu before his visit, but may be productive to sway the release of the NYTimes journalist Zhao Yan who was imprisioned 6 mo. ago. This scenario would be tricky, with immigration and amnesty a firey topic in the Senate right now (Read LA Times article in their immigration coverage series). Yet it might underscore the hard rhetoric that Bush and Rice have been doling out about China's abhorrant human rights record.

***As it's been a while since I've posted, I've tried to add as many links as possible to this piece.