Undocumented Chinese Immigrants in Texas?

CNN reports this week the arrest of 15 Chinese undocumented immigrants along the Texas/Mexico border.  Many people do not know that there long has been Chinese migration through Mexico to the United States.  Since 1882, when the U.S. used the Chinese exclusion laws and other means to dramatically reduce n on Chinese immigration that would last decades, Chinese have been crossing the Mexican border. Early on, most of the traffic was along the border with California because Chinese rode ships into Mexican ports on the Pacific coast, Professor Peter Kwong (City University of New York) said. "This was a very early route," said Kwong, who wrote Forbidden Workers: Illegal Chinese Immigrants and American Labor. Eventually, though, Chinese immigrants began sailing directly into U.S. ports. Mexican again became a popular route in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when U.S. ports became less accessible. The Golden Venture incident, when a ship carrying 286 Chinese immigrants beached off the New York borough of Queens in 1993, drew broader attention to the issue of human suggling and further tightened access. More Chinese began flying into U.S. airports and requesting asylum. After September 11resyulted in tightened airport controls, smugglers began looking for less secure routes.

KJ