Refugees China

Two fishing boats allegedly ferrying Chinese immigrants from a mother ship offshore were seized by authorities Wednesday in small Northern California harbors in a widening of the recent wave of coastal smuggling. The two vessels, carrying nearly 300 refugees, were seized within hours of each other when they attempted to dock more than 60 miles apart at Moss Landing and Princeton, south of San Francisco. The U.S.

Nepal deported 18 Tibetans to China on Saturday, breaking a long-standing policy of handing refugees over to U.N. authorities and setting a precedent that could cut off the primary route for Tibetans trying to reach the Dalai Lama's exile government in India. The group included women and children as young as 6, according to an American scholar who followed the police motorcade from Nepal's capital, Katmandu, to the Chinese border.

A freighter carrying hundreds of illegal Chinese immigrants ran aground off one of New York City's most popular bathing beaches early Sunday. At least seven people perished as waves of immigrants leaped from the ship and struggled to reach shore through chilly Atlantic waters and heavy surf. Rescuers who converged on the beach said they saw hundreds of immigrants jumping off the 150-foot-long, rust-flecked freighter or scrambling down ropes into the water.

Two days after a boat packed with more than 400 Haitians, Dominicans and Chinese ran aground about a mile off the Florida coast, the U.S. Coast Guard began shipping the would-be migrants home, officials said Sunday night. Four of the 411 passengers, three of them pregnant women, were brought to shore for medical reasons and are expected to be returned later, said Mike Gilhooly, a spokesman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

COMING TO AMERICA ONE DAY IN THE SUMMER OF 1991, WITHOUT WARNING OR EXPLANATION, Zhou Wei and Xiao Chen were released from an Immigration and Naturalization Service prison in Texas. They had no money, no food and no idea where they were or how to contact the relatives in New York City they had never met. And it was pouring. The two men, both just shy of 21, were overwhelmed with joy.

Searchers have found the final missing man who was among 56 Chinese boat people who came ashore in northwestern Australia last month, customs officials said. The man was walking along a road when spotted by searchers in a helicopter. He was about 18 miles from the area where 35 of the boat people showed up 10 days ago. Their wooden boat came ashore on Dec. 31. Most of the others were found last weekend in Australia's harsh outback. They survived by eating snakes, small crocodiles and lizards.

Two months ago, 35-year-old Ren-Fu Yang arrived on California shores faint and filthy after days of being holed up in a smuggling vessel, drinking saltwater and eating two bowls of cold rice a day. Friday, the slight journalist stepped outside the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles a free man, one of two Chinese nationals smuggled to California from Fujian province to win their political asylum cases this week.

A group of Chinese men arrested near a shopping center here had been in the country about four days and were part of a larger group of illegal immigrants bound for New York City, immigration officials said Monday. Authorities said the 26 men were among about 100 people who boarded a freighter in China for a monthlong trip across the Pacific.

Eleven illegal Chinese immigrants seized on fishing boats this week escaped Wednesday night when the government bus transporting them to Kern County stopped for gas in Fresno. According to the U.S. Border Patrol, the Chinese nationals forced open a door in the rear of the bus. By Thursday night 10 of the 11 immigrants had been rounded up by Border Patrol officers and Fresno police and sheriff's deputies. They were among the 300 Chinese taken off fishing boats near Santa Cruz on Wednesday.

Some visitors came with Mandarin music videos, Chinese noodles and copies of the New Testament. Another showed up with scissors to clip the locks of the children, whose long voyage from China's coastal province of Fujian landed them in Los Angeles County's juvenile detention centers. About 150 Fujianese youngsters are behind the gates of the county's juvenile halls, after smugglers' efforts to shepherd them unnoticed into California failed.

In the predawn hours of June 6, 1993, Dai Bo Mei stood on the deck of the freighter Golden Venture, looking at the lights of New York City a few hundred yards away. This is the closest she has been to freedom in America. Dai was part of the Golden Venture's cargo--282 illegal Chinese immigrants. She'd traveled for more than a year and promised smugglers $30,000 for this chance to slip into the United States.

President Clinton has decided to alter U.S. policy and grant refuge in the United States to Chinese immigrants who claim that they will be punished for opposing abortion in their homeland, government officials said Thursday.

Two months ago, 35-year-old Ren-Fu Yang arrived on California shores faint and filthy after days of being holed up in a smuggling vessel, drinking saltwater and eating two bowls of cold rice a day. Friday, the slight journalist stepped outside the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles a free man, one of two Chinese nationals smuggled to California from Fujian province to win their political asylum cases this week.

Two months ago, 35-year-old Ren-Fu Yang arrived on California shores faint and filthy after days of being holed up in a smuggling vessel, drinking saltwater and eating two bowls of cold rice a day. Friday, the slight journalist stepped outside the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles a free man, one of two Chinese nationals smuggled to California from Fujian province to win their political asylum cases this week.

Two Chinese nationals from Fujian province who were smuggled to the West Coast on filthy, crowded ships have won political asylum, the first of the recent wave of Chinese immigrants to win their freedom in Southern California, according to local immigration attorneys. One man who was released Wednesday said he was persecuted for violating China's one-child policy. A successful asylum application based on the one-child policy could indicate that scores more Chinese stand a chance of legal U.S.

Mexican officials Monday hustled a fourth and final group of Chinese migrants aboard a plane and returned them to China, ending a mass deportation that began with the U.S. Coast Guard's seizure of three ships off the Baja California coast. The 77 Chinese placed aboard a jetliner at Tijuana's international airport brought to 667 the number of emigrants returned by Mexico to China since Saturday, Mexican officials said.

A man who identified himself as a former Chinese diplomatic aide on Monday announced that he is seeking political asylum in the United States after an odyssey that he said took him from Bolivia to suburban Los Angeles. Liang Xiang Dong, 27, identifying himself as a former assistant to China's Bolivian ambassador, said he was stripped of his post and ordered to return to Beijing after he made statements sympathetic to the pro-democracy movement crushed by the government in June, 1989.

U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service officials said Tuesday they plan to interview a man who says he is a former Chinese diplomatic aide who was stripped of his post for pro-democracy activities. INS spokeswoman Virginia Kice confirmed on Tuesday that the agency has received an application for political asylum from Liang Xiang Dong, 27, who said he was an aide to the Chinese ambassador to Bolivia. Asylum decisions usually are made within six months, she said.

Amid reports that additional suspected smuggling vessels were approaching the United States, a third vessel carrying Chinese migrants off Ensenada surrendered Sunday to the Mexican navy, and the passengers were transported quickly to Tijuana for a flight back home. When the L-1011 jet carrying about 300 deportees took off at 12:30 p.m., the total of Chinese migrants from three smuggling boats deported by Mexico over the weekend reached 590.

There were 70 days of unbearable thirst, days spent crammed in the filthy hull of a ship. Then came the terror of an emergency appendectomy in a foreign hospital, and more lonely days holed up in a Monterey Park motel, living on white bread and wondering whether this journey would lead to anything but more fear and pain.