At the beginning of every week, a steady stream of Chinese restaurant workers files into the nest of Chinatown employment agencies clustered under the Manhattan Bridge: young men with spiky hair barely out of their teens, smooth-skinned girls who still giggle about their crushes and stocky older men who left their families behind in China years ago.
The workers walk in and out, in and out, checking each of the dozens of dusty single-room agencies. They focus on the white boards and walls of notes that list the hundreds, if not thousands, of job openings available across the country each week: kitchen helpers, chefs, waitresses, telephone answerers, delivery men who can drive, delivery men who don't need to drive.
Among the job seekers one Monday in late September was Xue Qingxi, a 38-year-old immigrant with large, friendly eyes and a bright green T-shirt who had arrived in New York City the day before, towing his belongings in two small black rolling suitcases. Feeling it was time for a change, he had just left his job as a cook in a Chinese restaurant in North Carolina. Where, exactly, in North Carolina, he wasn't sure.
rural
"It's all rural," he said dismissively. After renting a bed for the night for US$15, he was wandering in and out of the employment agencies the next afternoon, looking for his next job.
"I want to leave tonight," he said.
There are more than 36,000 Chinese restaurants in the US -- more than the total number of McDonald's, Wendy's and Burger King restaurants combined, says Chinese Restaurant News, an industry publication. They have popped up in exurban strip malls and on the decaying streets of former industrial centers in the Midwest: buffets, takeouts. And the main hub for staffing that vast network of restaurants -- or at least those that lie east of the Rocky Mountains -- is at the convergence of Forsyth, Division and Eldridge streets, where the rumble of the subway can be heard overhead.
"It's remarkable how successful the Chinese have been in adapting their food to the US, making it so available," said Kenneth Guest, a sociology professor at Baruch College in New York, who has studied Chinese restaurant workers. "You can go and get a great meal for great prices, based on workers paid well below minimum wage."
Well, on paper at least, the salaries will squeak by minimum wage, especially if tips are taken into consideration. All the agencies have Chinese signs explaining the concept of the minimum wage law.
The vast majority of these workers, like Xue, are undocumented, and have paid tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege of being in the US. In the Delaware-size area around Fuzhou, a city that has become China's leading exporter of restaurant workers to the US, the going rate for being smuggled is now around US$60,000, Guest said.
The risk of being caught exists, but arrests are sporadic. Last November, US Immigration and Customs agents detained 80 illegal immigrants and arrested eight people in raids in five New York state counties. In recent years, authorities have also focused on restaurants and employment agencies in Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Michigan. The detained illegals are usually put into deportation proceedings.
But for almost all the workers, including Xue, the risk is worth it. All they care about are the three numbers: the monthly salary, the area code where the restaurant is located and the number of hours it takes to travel by bus from New York City to the job.
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