Im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials have be­gun hunt­ing down il­le­gal Chi­nese na­tion­als who have come in­to T&T to "slave" in thriv­ing casi­nos, Chi­nese su­per­mar­kets, restau­rants and pri­vate mem­bers' clubs.But while the hunt goes on in­land, se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers lament that the coast­lines of T&T re­main open for hu­man traf­fick­ing and smug­gling of il­le­gal car­go in­clud­ing drugs, guns and am­mu­ni­tion.The un­der­world traf­fick­ing ring is be­lieved to be con­trolled by a branch of the Chi­nese Tri­ad, a well-or­gan­ised crim­i­nal gang which ex­ploits poor Chi­nese im­mi­grants.These Chi­nese work­ers, des­per­ate for a shot at rich­es in T&T, come from poor ar­eas of Chi­na, in­clud­ing Ningx­ia, Guizhou and Quin­hai.

They work be­tween 12 and 15 hours dai­ly, labour­ing in Chi­nese busi­ness places and are giv­en strict in­struc­tions not to speak or in­ter­act with lo­cal cit­i­zens, a se­cu­ri­ty source dis­closed.Al­though im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials have been vis­it­ing Chi­nese fast food out­lets, re­quest­ing to see work per­mits and oth­er doc­u­ments, sources say many of the il­le­gal Chi­nese im­mi­grants re­main hid­den from the pub­lic glare, work­ing in store­rooms and kitchens.A se­nior po­lice source, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, re­vealed that il­le­gal im­mi­grants were com­ing in­to T&T through sev­er­al points in south Trinidad, name­ly at Puer­to Grande, Erin; Buenos Ayres, Erin; Ma­haw­al Trace, San­ta Flo­ra; Gal­far Point, Ce­dros; Point Co­co, Granville, Morne Di­a­blo, Pe­nal; and Quinam Beach, Siparia.

The im­mi­grants are met by lo­cals who use per­son­al con­nec­tions at the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment and Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty to pro­vide of­fi­cial doc­u­ments for the Chi­nese work­ers.In an in­ter­view, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sub­has Pan­day, who has been gath­er­ing in­tel­li­gence on hu­man traf­fick­ing in T&T, re­vealed that il­le­gal im­mi­grants were en­ter­ing Trinidad through sev­er­al points at Moru­ga, in­clud­ing La Lune, La Rufin, Gran Chemin, Ca­nary and La Kable."Many of the il­le­gal im­mi­grants come through the La Rufin Riv­er and they move up­wards the is­land," Pan­day said.Fish­er­man Paul Ca­noe (not his re­al name) de­nied see­ing any Chi­nese work­ers in Moru­ga."We more have il­le­gal Venezue­lans and Guyanese com­ing through here, but no Chi­nese," he said.

But se­nior po­lice de­tec­tives in the South West­ern Di­vi­sion said the in­flux of il­le­gal im­mi­grants was putting a fur­ther strain on man­pow­er.A se­nior de­tec­tive said it was near im­pos­si­ble to catch the traf­fick­ers who were al­ways one step ahead of the po­lice."We know who are the ones in­volved in the trade, but they have a good net­work in the com­mu­ni­ties and be­fore we reach on the spot, they are al­ready tipped off," the de­tec­tive said.He added that all of the un­des­ig­nat­ed ports are heav­i­ly forest­ed and it made bet­ter sense to fight the hu­man traf­fick­ers at sea, rather than from land."If Trinidad re­al­ly wants to deal with the hu­man traf­fick­ing, gun trade and drug prob­lems, then all that needs to be done is to mon­i­tor every boat that leaves Trinidad and goes to South Amer­i­ca," he said.

"The radar at San Fer­nan­do Hill is sup­posed to pick up the boats...Our Coast Guard needs to in­ter­cept them on the sea, check their car­go, but for some strange rea­son, that is not be­ing done."Even the Coast Guard in Ce­dros are not do­ing that."He said the Coast Guard must al­so mon­i­tor those fish­ing ves­sels which leave the ports with­out fish­ing nets."These boats go with ten big con­tain­ers of fu­el and no fish­ing nets...What are they­go­ing there for?" the of­fi­cer added.An­oth­er se­nior po­lice source said the can­cel­la­tion of the Off­shore Pa­trol Ves­sels and the dis­man­tling of the Blimp had fur­ther im­ped­ed their fight against hu­man traf­fick­ing and crime.But Pan­day said it was the role of the Coast Guard to mon­i­tor the coasts.

He said the Coast Guard had enough equip­ment to do this and the Blimp and the OPV's were not nec­es­sary.Pan­day said the Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment was work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to crack down on il­le­gal work­ers in T&T."They have been a lot of raids since the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship came in­to pow­er....A lot of Chi­nese have been de­tained and de­port­ed," he said."I don't have the fig­ures but since we came in­to pow­er, close sur­veil­lance is tak­ing place."He added that apart from il­le­gal im­mi­gra­tion, there was in­ter­nal hu­man traf­fick­ing in T&T, where­by in­no­cent coun­try girls were be­ing lured to Port-of-Spain to work in es­cort ser­vices.

No trans­paren­cy says Pe­nal cham­ber head

Mean­while, pres­i­dent of the Pe­nal Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Lin­coln Rag­birs­ingh said some­thing was fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong with the sys­tem where­by of­fi­cial doc­u­ments were pro­vid­ed for Chi­nese work­ers."It seems they have an un­fair ad­van­tage...Lo­cals have to wait for more than a year to get a pass­port, but the Chi­nese are com­ing in and they get in what­ev­er they need in a cou­ple of weeks," he said.

"It is not fair...The au­thor­i­ty has no trans­paren­cy."They need to find out who signs off these doc­u­ments and take ac­tion."Rag­birs­ingh said the Chi­nese na­tion­als af­fect­ed the econ­o­my be­cause the Chi­nese busi­ness­es did not pa­tro­n­ise the lo­cal busi­ness­man. "They are in their own world," he said."If they are us­ing chem­i­cals to clean, they use chem­i­cals from Chi­na. Every­thing they use is from Chi­na. They use prod­ucts that are not la­belled prop­er­ly."Though he ad­mit­ted to hav­ing no cred­i­ble ev­i­dence of hu­man traf­fick­ing, Rag­birs­ingh said the de­plorable con­di­tions un­der which some of the Chi­nese work­ers lived, as well as the rapid growth of Chi­nese busi­ness­es, made one sus­pi­cious.

Al­ready more than 14 new casi­nos, su­per­mar­kets and restau­rants have mush­roomed along the SS Erin Road, Debe, with on­ly a few of­fer­ing em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for lo­cals. Most of the busi­ness­es had Chi­nese work­ers, some of whom live in the busi­ness places, sleep­ing in­side cup­boards and on top of kitchen ta­bles, ac­cord­ing to health in­spec­tors.But Pan­day said every­thing was above board un­der the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship."Un­der my watch as far as I con­cerned, no mon­ey ever pass...If I have the slight­est in­di­ca­tion that there is any­thing like that, the Gov­ern­ment will look in­to it," he said.A se­nior im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cial said the cost of get­ting cit­i­zen­ship was $840, the cost of ac­quir­ing res­i­den­cy was $1,000, while work per­mits cost $600 month­ly.

$5,400 for work per­mits

But some of the Chi­nese im­mi­grants say they paid as much as $6,000 for cit­i­zen­ship and $5,400 an­nu­al­ly for work per­mits. Chi­nese restau­ra­teurs al­so de­nied that the process of ac­quir­ing of­fi­cial doc­u­ments was easy for them, al­though all of them said the fees paid were worth­while.Chi­nese busi­ness­woman, Sher­ry Zhou, who op­er­ates a restau­rant at Gol­con­da, said she had been in T&T for six years and still had not re­ceived res­i­dent sta­tus."I like it here, peo­ple nice nice so I want to stay," she said."I pay $5, 500 to get my work per­mit...I pay this every year."

An­oth­er Chi­nese restau­ra­teur, of Bar­rack­pore, named Jun Zheng, said he paid $4,000 per year for a work per­mit.Both said they were brought to Trinidad by rel­a­tives who lat­er ap­plied for the doc­u­ments on their be­half.An­oth­er restau­ra­teur, of Bar­rack­pore, said he paid $5,400 for his per­mit.At Dun­can Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do, an­oth­er Chi­nese busi­ness­woman said for the past few months, im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials had been con­stant­ly com­ing to their busi­ness­place look­ing for doc­u­ments.She added that she had been op­er­at­ing a busi­ness for the past eight years and had ob­tained her cit­i­zen­ship. She paid $6,000 for her cit­i­zen­ship pa­pers.She said: "I was lucky. I had two chil­dren here and I gave up Chi­na. I live here now." She said the Chi­nese had con­tributed pos­i­tive­ly to T&T and de­served their op­por­tu­ni­ties. (See Page A10)