20 Years After the Golden Venture
Twenty years ago on June 6, 1993, the Golden Venture grabbed the headlines. The vessel was a 147-foot-long cargo ship that smuggled 286 immigrants from China (mostly from Fujian province) along with 13 crew members that ran aground on a sandbar near Rockaway Beach in Queens, New York after a mutiny of sorts by one smuggler who had locked up the captain. The ship had sailed from Thailand, stopped in Kenya and circled the Cape of Good Hope, then headed northwest across the entire Atlantic Ocean to New York City on its four-month voyage. 10 people drowned in their attempts to flee the stranded ship and get to shore in the United States.The survivors were taken into custody by the Immigration and Naturalization Service and were held in various prisons throughout the U.S. while they applied for the right of asylum. Roughly 10% were granted asylum, and minors were released, while about half the remainder were deported (some being accepted by South American countries). Some remained in immigration detention for years fighting their cases, the majority in York, Pennsylvania.
The final 52 persons were released by President Bill Clinton on February 27, 1997.This case was an early test of the system of detaining asylum-seekers in prisons. It was also notable because some detainees created more than 10,000 folk art sculptures or Chinese paper folding, papier-mâché, and recycled materials while in York County Prison; these were later exhibited throughout the U.S.
For an interesting New Yorker blog post by Patrick Radden Keefe on the Golden Venture’s 20 year anniversary, click here.
KJ