East West - The Asian American Lifestyle Magazine

By I-Ching Ng

On the night of June 6, 1993, a 147-foot rusty ship ran aground 300 yards off the Rockaway shore of Queens, N.Y. For the city, still recovering from the aftershocks of the first World Trade Center bombing, the shipwreck of the Golden Venture — a Chinese smuggling ship — not only broke the silence of a full-moon night but also ignited an immigration outrage.

There were 286 humans on the rickety vessel, which tossed on the oceans for almost a year, traveling almost 17,000 miles. The passengers had escaped immigration police in the international waters, survived sub-standard living conditions and in-fighting on board. But when their snakeheads, or smugglers, in New York’s Chinatown failed to dispatch speed boats to pick them up at sea, the captain of Golden Venture was confined to his cabin by a smuggler mutiny on board, resulting in the shipwreck. Ten passengers drowned that night and only six managed to swim ashore and escape. The majority – remembered worldwide as dazed, blanketed figures huddled on the sandy beach suffering from hypothermia and other injuries – were detained.

Even after 13 years, the scars remain as they continue to fight to become free men in their adopted country. The stories are so compelling that film director and producer Peter Cohn spent nearly two years tracking the lives of four of the men since their arrival in the Rockaways. Cohn says he was astounded to learn how these men had fared since their story left the front pages. Cohn’s documentary “Golden Venture” premiered in May and was a selection at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival.

Under the ironclad rule of China’s communist regime, many ordinary Chinese citizens could not capitalize on the new opportunities of China’s feverish economic boom, he explains, which led them to the dangerous journey on the Golden Venture. “A lot of passengers were frustrated with their lives back in China, they didn’t feel they could get ahead,” Cohn says.

But getting ahead in the United States, may seem even more unattainable.

Detained

The survivors of the wreck met different fates.  First, they were hastily put behind bars in detention centers across the country.  Minors were released, another 35 successfully received political asylum and two were awarded artists’ green cards. About 111 survivors were eventually deported (nearly 60 of those deportees are estimated to have returned to the U.S. illegally). Others remained in immigration prison, the majority in York, Penn. – the largest U.S. immigration detention site in the country – for months or even years.

By early 1997, 42 months after they arrived in the Rockaways, 53 Golden Venture passengers remained in prison.  Then, 11 days after The New York Times ran a front-page article alleging that the George H.W. Bush administration would have granted the passengers asylum, President Clinton pardoned the final group.

The detainees were released with much fanfare in York, but the immigrants’ problems did not end there.  Many were soon tracked by the snakeheads, the Chinese gangs who illegally bring people into the country, who demanded their fees for transporting the men on the Golden Venture.

Additionally, the prospect of the “humanitarian parole” they received was not a rosy one. The parole allows parolees to apply for renewable work permits, but there is no process to graduate to permanent resident status or to allow family members to come to the U.S.  They also are subject to deportation anytime immigration authorities deem appropriate.  They remain in a fragile status, a perpetual legal limbo unless they receive asylum. Some of this last group of 53 men have since received asylum, but most have not.  

Uncertain Future

To combat this, a group of lawyers in York soon introduced a bill, written by Pennsylvania Rep. Todd Russell Platts, in Congress to seek permanent legal status for 31 of the men in the York contingent who had still not been granted asylum. The bill has failed twice, but the lawyers continue to resubmit it because the men are provided some temporary legal protection while the bill is under review.

Beverly Church, 66, a former nurse and paralegal from Pennsylvania, is regarded as a fairy godmother by the Chinese men. The pepper-haired woman worked on the bills which allow the detainees to stay here temporarily, and she hopes to persuade President George W. Bush to pass an executive order granting them permanent status.

A former detainee, Yan Min Lin, called Church frantically when he received a deportation letter in 2004 demanding him to leave the country with a limit of “40 pounds of baggage.”  Church was sympathetic. “By then he already owns his own restaurant business, is married and has children here. That’s inhumane. We cannot have a one-size-fits-all immigration policy,” Church says. “We can’t get involved with the Mexican borders, but we need to have a decent policy which caters to these men who already proved themselves to be good citizens in the past 13 years.”

Craig Trebilcock, an immigration attorney, has become lead counsel for the detainees, launching an epic court battle against the government. He also co-founded the Golden Vision Foundation, an interfaith coalition for immigrants' rights that provides housing and settlement assistance for the passengers during and after their release.

Trebilcock calls the detainees gentlemen, never illegal immigrants, as he believes such “preconceived” labels have tainted and shaped public discourse to criminalize Golden Venture passengers and impacted the current debate on immigration reform.

“We have come to a point in our nation’s history where just saying immigrant is a provocative word.  It’s a shame,” he says. “The fact that the passengers are still in legal limbo is symbolic of our nation’s inability to deal with immigration issues on a logical level. It’s all emotions, labels and platitude right now.”

Into an Immigration Firestorm

A military veteran, who served in Bosnia and Iraq and rescued East German residents fleeing the iron curtain, Trebilcock sees these Chinese men as no different from those that fled from communist tyranny in Germany. “When we saw these gentlemen landed on the shores of New York, we took these gentlemen to be heroes, not liabilities to this country,” he says. “As a veteran, I understand the need for border security. We can’t have open, unrestricted borders, but this is nothing these gentlemen are about. They came here under the guidelines of the U.S. law that allows political asylum applications. There’s an avenue for people in their situation to get legal status. But they went into a political firestorm,” he says.

1993 was an eventful year for the newly minted Clinton administration, which witnessed the first attack on the twin towers, a CIA shooting in Virginia and the arrival of the Golden Venture. The latter, however, was not an isolated incident.

In 1992 more than a dozen ships arrived in the U.S. carrying humans from China. Still, it was the Golden Venture that prompted the White House to form a special working group to single out the passengers for imprisonment. Many believe the exceptionally harsh treatment given to these Chinese immigrants was meant to serve as a warning to would-be illegal immigrants around the world.  

 “One thing I learned as an attorney in this area is there’s not such a thing called immigration law, but only immigration politics. It is often wrapped up in law, but it’s really politics,” Trebilcock says. 

He warns of repeating the xenophobia and discrimination found in U.S. immigration history such as the Chinese Exclusion Act in the 19th century and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. 

“This case is a test for the current administration. We are in a shooting war against Afghanistan and Iraq. [George W.] Bush often said we were there for freedom of men and dignity. But because of the inefficiency of the administration, a group of Chinese men fleeing from tyranny for better opportunities for their family are in limbo. President Bush should stand by his words and correct the injustice created by Clinton’s administration,” Trebilcock says.

Bill Westerman, co-curator of “Fly to Freedom: Art of the Golden Venture” — an exhibit of more than 10,000 sculptures made over four years by Golden Venture survivors while they were detained — says what is even more disappointing is that the precedent set by the U.S. in this case has since been accepted abroad. “The United Kingdom, Spain and other European countries now regularly jail failed asylum seekers. Australia recently set up off-shore concentration camps to prevent people from landing,” Westerman says. “All these countries are signatories to the Geneva Convention and the Geneva protocol of treatment of refugees and asylum seekers, so it’s the height of irony that these people are placed in maximum security prisons, warehouses or remote islands in the middle of the ocean.” 

For more information on the documentary and information about the legal battle, visit www.goldenventuremovie.com.

* Read personal stories of survivors in the June/July print issue.
**Group photo, copyright Gwendolen Cates 2006