Follow Up on the Golden Venture

Nina Bernstein has a fascinating story in the April 9 New York Times following up on the people on the journey of the Golden Venture, a freighter smuggling nearly 300 Chinese immigrants that ran ashore off of Queens in June 1993: “Although the details and whereabouts of many of the Golden Venture passengers remain sketchy, interviews with passengers, lawyers and longtime activists in the case, and a documentary filmmaker who spent two years tracking their experiences, paint a picture of bittersweet striving against a backdrop of growing insecurity.” Check out the story by clicking here.  Fears of “floods” of would-be asylum seekers from China, as well as other nations, contributed to asylum reform.  You be the judge of how the reforms worked and how various measures affected human trafficking, which today has grown to be a big industry with smuggling fees having gone up geometrically in the last decade.

KJ