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Authors: Patrick Radden Keefe
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arrival in America. Weng had better get on the telephone and make sure someone paid up, Sister Ping said, because if he didn’t, she had no reason to believe that Weng would honor his own debt when the time came. She might be forced to leave him stranded in Guatemala.
Weng’s brother-in-law eventually settled his debt, but Weng endedup spending a month in the hotel. Sister Ping would visit every so often, and many passengers seemed to pass through the hotel, some coming, some going; it appeared to be one way station in a complex logistical network. When Weng finally left, it was with a group of others who were transported overland to Tijuana. Sister Ping was waiting for them in Mexico when they arrived. She told them that they had reached the final leg of the journey, and that the group that preceded theirs had arrived safely. “Have faith,” she said.
At daybreak the following morning, Weng and the others were loaded into the trunk of a taxi, which delivered them to a van. The van had a false bottom, and ten of them squeezed into it for the ride across the border. Eventually they arrived in Los Angeles, and once again Sister Ping was there to meet them, this time accompanied by her husband, Yick Tak. “Congratulations, everyone,” she said. “You have arrived.” She issued them all plane tickets, and the group boarded a flight from LAX to Newark. Sister Ping and Yick Tak were careful to sit a few rows apart from the customers, lest any of them be caught.
When they reached Manhattan, Sister Ping placed Weng and the others in an apartment on Market Street and started telephoning their relatives to demand the balance of her fee. One misconception about the snakehead business is that the smugglers will bring people over and then force them to work as indentured servants for years in order to pay off their debt. Such an arrangement would make very little sense from the smuggler’s point of view. A busy smuggler like Sister Ping didn’t want to keep track of scores of debtors at various stages of repayment, any of whom might skip town during the months, or more often years, that it took them to come up with $18,000. Instead, the smugglers would hold passengers once they arrived in the United States, giving them thirty-six or seventy-two hours to satisfy the debt. Such an arrangement might be unimaginable in any other ethnic community, but familial and communal ties among the Chinese in America were so strong that a new arrival could count on a guarantor cobbling together a five-figure fee by borrowing small amounts from many people—$1,000here, $500 there. The immigrant was thus indentured not so much to the snakehead as to his own family.
Once Weng’s nephew had assembled the money Sister Ping was owed, she let Weng leave the Market Street apartment and look for work. He found a job working in an American restaurant Monday through Friday, and Sister Ping introduced him to an uncle of hers who ran a Chinese takeout in the Bronx. Weng could work there on weekends to supplement his income, she said. Weng threw himself into paying off his debts, and on his occasional days off he would make his way to Sister Ping’s shop and hang out. “She smuggled me here,” he later observed. Between the snakehead and the customer there was a peculiar kind of bond.
O ne dilemma Weng soon faced, which was shared by other undocumented Fujianese in the neighborhood, was how to send money home. Few of them had bank accounts; they took their payment, and hoarded it, in cash. Western Union charged expensive commissions and didn’t have outposts in the areas surrounding Fuzhou. The Bank of China’s money remittance service was notoriously slow and paid out remittances in Chinese yuan, always at an unfavorable exchange rate.
In her early years in New York, Sister Ping observed this dilemma and saw a business opportunity. More and more Fujianese were coming to the city every day. Along the border between Mexico and California,
Weng’s brother-in-law eventually settled his debt, but Weng endedup spending a month in the hotel. Sister Ping would visit every so often, and many passengers seemed to pass through the hotel, some coming, some going; it appeared to be one way station in a complex logistical network. When Weng finally left, it was with a group of others who were transported overland to Tijuana. Sister Ping was waiting for them in Mexico when they arrived. She told them that they had reached the final leg of the journey, and that the group that preceded theirs had arrived safely. “Have faith,” she said.
At daybreak the following morning, Weng and the others were loaded into the trunk of a taxi, which delivered them to a van. The van had a false bottom, and ten of them squeezed into it for the ride across the border. Eventually they arrived in Los Angeles, and once again Sister Ping was there to meet them, this time accompanied by her husband, Yick Tak. “Congratulations, everyone,” she said. “You have arrived.” She issued them all plane tickets, and the group boarded a flight from LAX to Newark. Sister Ping and Yick Tak were careful to sit a few rows apart from the customers, lest any of them be caught.
When they reached Manhattan, Sister Ping placed Weng and the others in an apartment on Market Street and started telephoning their relatives to demand the balance of her fee. One misconception about the snakehead business is that the smugglers will bring people over and then force them to work as indentured servants for years in order to pay off their debt. Such an arrangement would make very little sense from the smuggler’s point of view. A busy smuggler like Sister Ping didn’t want to keep track of scores of debtors at various stages of repayment, any of whom might skip town during the months, or more often years, that it took them to come up with $18,000. Instead, the smugglers would hold passengers once they arrived in the United States, giving them thirty-six or seventy-two hours to satisfy the debt. Such an arrangement might be unimaginable in any other ethnic community, but familial and communal ties among the Chinese in America were so strong that a new arrival could count on a guarantor cobbling together a five-figure fee by borrowing small amounts from many people—$1,000here, $500 there. The immigrant was thus indentured not so much to the snakehead as to his own family.
Once Weng’s nephew had assembled the money Sister Ping was owed, she let Weng leave the Market Street apartment and look for work. He found a job working in an American restaurant Monday through Friday, and Sister Ping introduced him to an uncle of hers who ran a Chinese takeout in the Bronx. Weng could work there on weekends to supplement his income, she said. Weng threw himself into paying off his debts, and on his occasional days off he would make his way to Sister Ping’s shop and hang out. “She smuggled me here,” he later observed. Between the snakehead and the customer there was a peculiar kind of bond.
O ne dilemma Weng soon faced, which was shared by other undocumented Fujianese in the neighborhood, was how to send money home. Few of them had bank accounts; they took their payment, and hoarded it, in cash. Western Union charged expensive commissions and didn’t have outposts in the areas surrounding Fuzhou. The Bank of China’s money remittance service was notoriously slow and paid out remittances in Chinese yuan, always at an unfavorable exchange rate.
In her early years in New York, Sister Ping observed this dilemma and saw a business opportunity. More and more Fujianese were coming to the city every day. Along the border between Mexico and California,
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