The system was established by administrative fiat in 1982 and has never been enshrined in law by the legislature. As practiced, it violates several constitutional guarantees, including one requiring adherence to judicial procedures when people are detained.
"Sometimes it doesn't even matter whether you have the right permits to be here or not," Wu said. "They'll take away your cart -- they'll take away the tools you need to make a living -- and that's not right."
Wu said he was detained last year, when he was stopped and found not to be carrying a temporary resident's permit. He said he had left his at home.
In truth, many of the 3 million migrants who live and work in the Beijing area do not have the required residency, employment and home-town permits. Everyone, including the police, knows this.
Wu said he was taken to a large center north of Beijing, where he was not allowed to make a telephone call and was fed no more than steamed bread twice a day. Within a few days, he was put on a train bound for his home province, where relatives were contacted and secured his release for US$24. Detainees who could not muster the fine, he said, had to spend a week in custody doing farm work.
As soon as he scraped together the train fare, Wu returned to Beijing, resuming the same work, in plain view of any authorities who cared to notice.
Wu's experience was a common result of a system that, in its patent unfairness, reflects the contradictory attitudes that cities hold toward rural migrants.
The menial work the migrants do, from construction to garbage recycling, water delivery to vegetable sales, is vital to city life and the economy. Yet city officials say the residence restrictions are necessary to prevent the growth of slums, and residents like to blame migrants for crime and filth.
"They need us, but they're afraid of us," Wu said of the Beijing authorities.
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