Today's 'Boat People' Travel By Air
In a scheme involving forged passports and the Japanese mob, more Chinese are taking to the skies in their desperate quest to immigrate to the United States.
Members of a Japanese crime syndicate called the Yakuza buy Japanese passports and sell them to Chinese hoping to make it across the Pacific to America, CBS News Correspondent Barry Petersen reports.
These airborne stowaways are part of a new generation of boat people. As CBS News reported Monday night, Chinese have been illegally entering Japan for years, encouraged by desperate economic conditions in China and sometimes paying up to $30,000 for the trip. The steep price of the journey forces many into virtual indentured servitude until they pay off the fee.
But Japan's lingering recession has altered many of those travel plans. Work is hard to come by in Japan, so the island nation is now a mere layover for Chinese on the way to the United States and its booming economy.
The boat people are sometimes transported in rusty hulks and shipping containers. Meanwhile, according to a smuggler affiliated with the Yakuza who spoke to CBS News on condition of anonymity, the process for flying a Chinese immigrant into the United States is remarkably simple.
"We buy real passports from Japanese who want to make a quick $2,000," he said, "then replace the picture. Technically, it's perfect."
The Chinese want Japanese passports because citizens of Japan don't need a visa to visit the U.S., while Chinese citizens do need visas. Those Japanese passports allow them to fly rather than sail to America's borders. A 14-hour flight is much safer than a sea journey of up to 14 days in a cargo container. One such container recently arrived in Seattle with three dead Chinese inside.
Japanese authorities are aware of the passport scheme, but smugglers merely avoid their watch.
The Chinese fly into a Japanese airport and stay inside the security area. There they are met, given a forged passport complete with forged stamps. Then it's just a matter of going to the right gate and catching the flight to the promised land.
The smugglers carefully target their destination airports. Both John F. Kennedy and Newark airports are favored destinations for smugglers because they're so busy. Dallas, Detroit, San Francisco and San Jose are also frequented. The smugglers avoid Chicago, the man CBS Newsinterviewed said, because security there is too strict.
And according to the smuggler, the Yakuza might be developing a new plan for acquiring even more passports: American ones, bought for $80 from residents of an American Chinatown, then forged to display the photograph of a Chinese person hoping to make the cross-Pacific journey.