THEY left China as political or economic migrants looking for a new life in the Land of the Free. But, says a new report, the American dream has turned into a nightmare for many of the hordes fleeing the mainland.
For the first time, detailed accounts of the suffering encountered by the thousands of peasants during their desperate flight to America have been documented by an expert on Chinese gangs.
And, in the words of many of the illegal immigrants now in the United States, their lives are 'hell'.
Professor Ko-lin Chin conducted interviews with at least 300 mainland Chinese who had bought passage to the US from ruthless smugglers. But he believes that an average of at least 10,000 each year leave their homes in Fujian, risking their lives for a new life in the New World.
Horrific stories of hundreds of people crammed into the holds of rusting hulks for months are commonplace. But their later detentions in safe houses in New York's Chinatown are far worse than previously recorded.
'A lot of human suffering goes on in safe houses in the middle of Manhattan,' said Professor Chin. 'I never realised that these people had to suffer so much . . . They are being tortured and exploited right under our eyes.' Professor Chin's study, funded by the United States' National Science Foundation, has for the first time uncovered the brutal realities of dealing with the mainland's smugglers in human cargo.