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Illegal immigrants yearn to return home

Illegal Chinese immigrants detained in Taichung County call home on the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival yesterday. PHOTO: KU HENG-CHAN, TAIPEI TIMES

Families around the nation reunite today to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival. But for the 821 illegal Chinese immigrants accommodated in a Hsinchu shelter, home is a dream they pine for.

The Hsinchu shelter is one of the three accommodation centers for illegal Chinese immigrants set up by the National Police Administration (NPA). The other two are in Ilan and Matsu.

The Hsinchu shelter, like the other two centers, has reached its capacity. Currently, the Hsinchu shelter has 821 inmates. All its inmates are female and so far 15 babies have been delivered in the shelter.

"The wish of everyone here is to go home," said Zhang Hongyan (張洪燕), a 22-year-old from Sichuan Province, who was nabbed several days after she arrived in Taiwan.

Zhang was sent to the shelter more than 10 months ago. The shelter, occupying five hectares, belongs to the Hsinchu City Government.

Zhang paid NT$200,000 to the human-smuggling gang that transported her to Taiwan. She said she was arrested in Taipei last year but was too unfamiliar with the city's environment to know where exactly she was nabbed.

"I was shopping in a supermarket a few days after I got here. A policeman heard me speaking and noticed that my accent was different. He asked to see my identification card and I failed to produce one because I had none," Zhang said.

"In Sichuan, I was told how good Taiwan is and how easy it is to make money in Taiwan. Everyone who heard the description would want to come to Taiwan," she said.

But her greatest hope now is to go home.

"I hope the two sides [China and Taiwan] can reopen negotiations so that we can go home as soon as possible," Zhang said.

A cheerful woman, Zhang said many of her roommates have gone home.

"I believe my turn will come soon," she laughed.

Located on a small hill, the shelter compound is surrounded by wire fences and iron gates. No inmates are allowed to leave the compound apart from those in need of medical treatment.

Inside the compound are scattered one- and two-story buildings intersected by trees and dots of green. The compound used to be a military base. Now, four of the buildings have been renovated to receive the illegal immigrants.

The biggest room has a capacity for 100 people. While all inmates have individual beds and simple entertainment facilities such as a TV set and chest, they are locked inside doors made of iron bars all day.

"They are let out in turn only to collect meals for other inmates. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, religious groups come here to console them or preach to them," said a shelter manager who wished to remain anonymous.

However, even nuns and pastors can only console or preach to the inmates from outside the iron doors.

Locked all day in their room, the inmates, nevertheless, appeared to be rather well-behaved and respectful. Most of them wore red shirts and blue shorts. Quietly sitting on their beds, some played cards and some were idle.

The shelter manager said the inmates are freed from their rooms for a few hours three days a week to do outdoor exercises in the compound.

"Most of them have graduated from high school or junior high school. Some of them are illiterate," the manager said.

Around 80 percent of the inmates worked as prostitutes before they were arrested, the manager said.

The shelter prepared a nursing room for 15 mothers, who are separated from the other inmates and stay with their babies. The room has air conditioning and is on the second floor.

Most of the babies are just several months old.

A policeman guarding the nursing room said the mothers enjoyed better meals than ordinary inmates.

"They have fruit with their lunch and we cook sesame oil chicken [a traditional nourishing recipe for new mothers] for them," the policeman said.

Dai Yunzhi (戴雲枝), an 18-year-old mother, is from Anhui Province and her baby is five months old.

"I have been here for about a year. Days in the shelter are not too bad," Dai said.

She said the female police guarding her room gave her some nursing books to read because she is young and inexperienced in raising children.

Dai was arrested immediately upon her arrival in Taiwan.

"I hope I can go home as early as possible. My parents know I have a baby," she said.

The Interior Ministry's Bureau of Immigration, which is running a monthly deficit of NT$5.5 million to handle illegal Chinese immigrants, said 95 percent of Taiwan's illegal immigrants came from China.

Even as the police and the Coast Guard Administration have reinforced a crackdown on human smuggling across the Strait, two-thirds of illegal Chinese immigrants coming to Taiwan are still at large, a senior immigration official said.

Steve Wu (吳學燕), deputy commissioner of the Bureau of Immigration, said smuggling boats usually carry 12 illegal Chinese immigrants.

"We could only manage to nab three to five people on a boat. So far we have arrested 2,319 women. But we calculated there are at least 7,000 illegal female Chinese immigrants at large," Wu said.

Most illegal immigrants paid smugglers NT$300,000 to be ferried to Taiwan.

"Suppose you have 12 people on a boat. The gang can make NT$3.6 million just from a handful of people," Wu said.

As fishermen found their industry increasingly unprofitable, many have turned to human smuggling because of its hefty profits, Wu said.

The police, Wu said, also found it increasingly difficult to arrest illegal Chinese immigrants.

"As all three shelters are already packed, we can only temporarily accommodate these illegal immigrants in police stations," Wu said.

However, a station can handle only 20 to 30 illegal immigrants.

"These immigrants have made the police's life very strained," Wu said.

"Some policemen, so exhausted from handling the immigrants, got angry when seeing more were brought to their stations," Wu added.

Wu said one solution is to expand the shelters.

"We are even willing to give the Chinese government an amount of money to help build a shelter in Fujian Province so that China can handle the immigrants on its own," Wu said.
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