AGREEMENTS with Taiwan to curb drift net fishing are contributing to the smuggling of Chinese immigrants to the United States by boat, a US Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) official has said.
The restrictions on fishing with drift nets - also known as ''walls of death'' - are leaving some Taiwanese fishing trawlers without a mission, the INS official said.
Immigrant smuggling was used as a way to keep the boats active, the official added.
Agreements between Taiwan and the US restricting drift net fishing have been in place for three years in a bid to limit the unintentional killing of marine mammals, turtles and sea birds.
And at the start of 1993, a United Nations permanent ban on drift net fishing in the high seas took effect.
The INS official said the US had become aware of the smuggling of Chinese immigrants by boat only within the last two years, although it may have been going on earlier.