Golden Venture immigration documentary

Facts (as of 2015)

Status of Golden Venture passengers today

About 220 GV passengers live in the US.
Of the 111 who were deported, about 60 have returned to the US illegally.
A group of 30 passengers who were releasedfrom jail on a presidential parole live in legal limbo, neither legal nor illegal. They face the risk of deportation.

Lives of the passengers today

Most passengers work in or own Chinese restaurants.
They live throughout the country. In today's American, Chinatown is everywhere.
Many have gotten married and have American-born children.
Those without legal status haven't seen their families in more than 14 years, including some with wives and children in China.
A handful have become US citizens.

The voyage

	Feb., 1993	90 immigrants board Golden Venture off Thailand.
	March, 1993	200 more immigrants board the ship off Mombasa, Kenya. They had been stranded there for a year after another smuggling ship, the Najd II, broke down.
	June 6, 1993	The Golden Venture runs aground 300 yards from a New York City beach, near Ft. Tilden, a federal park in the borough of Queens. Ten passengers die. The rest are immediately detained by the INS.

Detention

The INS detained Golden Venture passengers in jails around the US. Almost 150 were held in the York County, PA jail.
99 were sent back to China. 12 received asylum in South America through a deal brokered by the Vatican.
53 passengers were detained until Feb. 1997, when President Clinton ordered their parole. They were not given full legal status.

Advocates

Soon after the immigrants arrived in the York County jail, a group of York attorneys volunteered to represent them in asylum hearings.
People from York were drawn to help the detainees. They began to hold weekly vigils outside the jail.
An unusual cross-ideological coalition came together. It included Abortion foes opposed to China's one-child policy, feminists, human rights activists and citizens who had never joined a cause.
Today the Golden Venture coalition has become the Golden Vision Foundation, which operates a facility in York, Friendship House, which provides housing and transitional services to released detainees.

Fujian Province

Almost all the Golden Venture passengers come from Fujian Province, in Southeastern China, across from Taiwan.
Generations of Fujianese have gone abroad, first settling in Southeast Asia . In the early 1980s, Fujianese began to come to the US in large numbers, remaking Chinatown in New York and other cities.
Fujian is one of China's most prosperous provinces, with money sent back from abroad fueling economic growth.

Coercive birth control

In the 1970s, China initiated population control policies limiting families to one child.
In the early 90s, birth control enforcement was stepped up in Fujian Province. There were multiple reliable reports of forced sterilization and abortion.
Right to Life groups in the US fervently oppose the one-child policy, and have been a powerful political force for granting asylum for one-child applicants.
Immigration appeals courts ruled that one-child claims were not grounds for asylum, but were superseded by an executive order from the first President Bush.
In 1996, Congress passes legislation granting asylum to a maximum of 1000 one child Chinese asylum seekers per year.

Asylum

Most of the passengers requested political asylum based on the claim that they were fleeing China's coercive population control measures.
Under the first Bush administration, most "one-child" asylum claims were successful. The Clinton Administration changed the Bush policy.
The Clinton Administration ordered the INS to detain all the passengers, rather than release them on bond, which had been the previous policy.
Advocates charged that the detainees were subjected to rushed hearings with predetermined outcomes. They further charged that the White House directly interfered with the immigration judiciary.
Only about 35 of the passengers ultimately won political asylum.

The snakeheads

People smugglers known as "snakeheads" began to smuggle Chinese immigrants by ship in the early 90s.
Dozens of ships came across the Pacific. Most were intercepted.
Lee Peng Fei, who was based in Bangkok, was the mastermind of the Golden Venture voyage.
Sister Ping, the notorious snakehead then based in New York's Chinatown, put up the money for the Golden Venture. The Fuk Ching gang was also involved.
Small boats were supposed to meet the Golden Venture off shore. A gang war in New York caused those plans to fall apart. The Snakeheads took control of the ship and deliberately ran it aground.
Lee Peng Fei was arrested in Bangkok, extradited and sentenced to 20 years. Sister Ping was also arrested and extradited. In March, 2006, she was sentenced to 35 years.

The ship

The Golden Venture was a 147-foot vessel, registered in Honduras. It was previously known as the Tong Sern. It was classed as a "coastal freighter."
Snakehead Lee Peng Fei bought the ship in Singapore sometime in 1992.
The Golden Venture was auctioned off by the government and put back into service, renamed the United Caribbean.
In August, 2000, the freighter was towed off the coast of Boca Raton FL and deliberately sunk to the bottom, to be used as an artificial reef.
The wreck became a popular destination for scuba tours.
The hurricanes of 2005 broke the vessel apart. The hulk now lies scattered on the ocean floor.

Amir Tobing

Amir Humuntal Lubman Tobing was the Indonesian Captain of the Golden Venture.
When the small roundezvous vessels that were supposed to meet the Golden Venture failed to show up, Tobing wanted to take the ship to a safe harbor for supplies.
Snakeheads on the boat mutinied, and confined Tobing to his cabin.
Tobing was sentenced to four years in federal prison. He was later deported to Indonesia.
Less than a year later, Tobing was caught by the Coast Guard off the coast of Washington on a burning sail boat, full of marijuana. He's now serving 10 years.

Passenger summary

286 passengers were on the ship.
262 men, 24 women
10 died.
Six escaped.
14 juveniles were released to court custody.
35 received political asylum.
55 were released on bond or INS parole.
Two received artist's visas.
53 were released on a parole from President Clinton, but were not awarded legal status.
111 were deported, including 12 who found political asylum in Latin America.
Of the 111 deported, it's believed that about half have returned to the US illegally.