Forbidden Workers: Illegal Chinese Immigrants and American Labor

In a gripping expose, Kwong (The New Chinatown) unravels the workings of a vast international Chinese smuggling network that shepherds some 100,000 people per year, in concert with Chinese organized crime, to destinations from Australia to France. His focus is the recent influx to the New York metropolitan area of illegal Fuzhounese immigrants (originating from rural counties around the Chinese coastal city of Fuzhou), who have displaced the Cantonese as the largest ethnic group of Chinese immigrants to the U.S. Employed by subcontractors, working 84-hour weeks in below-minimum-wage jobs, these undocumented aliens endure conditions of indentured servitude, working for years to pay back the ""snakeheads"" who smuggled them into the U.S. for exorbitant fees. Chair of Asian American studies at Hunter College in New York, Kwong opposes current anti-immigrant fever, calling instead for the extension of U.S. labor standards to all workers, a move he hopes will eliminate employers' incentive to recruit and exploit illegals. His report serves as a rallying point for all who want to prevent the U.S. working class from sliding down to Third World living standards. (Jan.)