The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream

I picked up this book hoping to learn more about the human smuggling business that I had heard about here and there, and instead was pleasantly surprised to find myself engrossed in a book that weaves complex characters and events together as fluidly as if it were a novel. The author does a great job of intertwining immigration law and policy within the story without making it boring or interrupting the suspenseful pace of the book. This book was enlightening - it has this enhanced my understanding of the Chinese underground world, the Chinese immigrants that were indirectly a part of that world, and the US and foreign law enforcement that attempted to shake that world, and it did so in a way that was more engaging than I thought possible given the subject matter.

This book opens with a gripping, cinematic description of a signal event: The crash-landing of the Golden Venture on a sandbar outside New York Harbor in June 1993. Many of the 300 Chinese passengers hidden inside came out on deck and began leaping into the churning surf, desperate to swim to dry land and win asylum. Park police patrolling a nearby beach heard screams coming from the ocean. A Coast Guard helicopter soon circled overhead, followed by TV crews, with spotlights capturing men and women on deck, some jumping and some scared to try. To the officers on site and to viewers watching on TV, it was equally stunning and mysterious: Who were these people? Who brought them here? How vast was this Asian migration? This opening scene in "The Snakehead," a brilliant account of illegal immigration, is just a first taste. What emerged that dark night was really the latest iteration of a classic American story: Passage from a distant homeland to this place of promise, replete with a harrowing journey across the sea, life-and-death risks, gritty determination and acts of desperation. The story endures, even if the circumstances change. In this telling, the Chinese ordeal of immigration has many fresh dynamics. Powerful smugglers who arrange passage and violent street gangs that manage the chattel split a lucrative take of $35,000 a head. There are edgy immigration agents, like the pugnacious Jerry Stuchiner, and savvy Chinese mob informants, like "The Fat Man." There are idiotic immigration procedures, allowing felons to walk free while the vulnerable remain locked up. Patrick Radden Keefe grasps many complex themes and weaves them into a compelling narrative. At the heart of his story lies a crafty woman known as Sister Ping (though she, and this book, might have been called "The Godmother"). An immigrant from Fujian province, she opened a small shop in New York's Chinatown in 1982. Dressed like a shabby grandmother, with a hangdog expression, she hardly looked like a criminal mastermind. Yet she became adept, and then unmatched, as a "snakehead," or smuggler of her compatriots. Using fake passports, cheap flights, blow-up rafts to cross rivers, and underground connections throughout Asia and Central America, she created an extensive assembly of operators who shepherded thousands of Chinese to America. Sister Ping achieved mythic status in Chinatown by granting favors and lending cash, convincing the helpless that she was a compassionate mobster. In her store, she also concocted a sideline money-transfer business, enabling immigrants to remit U.S. dollars to China without the annoying forms or restrictions of the Bank of China (whose branch sat across the street). From those laboring hard to send money home, she earned millions more. China's economic bonanza, among other things, fueled a mania in Fujian for spending newfound money on elaborate ways to sneak into America. Demand for passage grew so fast that in the early '90s Sister Ping bega

This book is worth reading. First off, it's worth reading because it's entertaining. It tells a compelling story of international crime, rife with gangsters and murders and shootings and human smuggling and even a major shipwreck. It trails off a little in the latter half of the book, as the action winds down and the book gets more contemplative, but it's still a compelling read throughout. And it's the second, more contemplative half that really makes this book worth reading, because the latter portions of the book give the reader a well-balanced, fair, and detailed picture of the horrible mishmash of U.S. immigration policies that have created criminals like Sister Ping. While never hiding or eliding over the deaths and horrors caused by the international human smuggling trade, the author also clearly shows how byzantine, illogical, and contradictory U.S. political decisions have created the human smuggling trade. Sister Ping never regarded herself as a criminal, and if the Chinese and American governments had had more sensible policies, she might never have had the opportunity to become one. Instead, though, because America almost completely prohibits legal immigration, she was able to exploit that restriction for millions; because China's currency policies ignored the actual exchange rate for so long, she was able to make millions converting currency internationally as well. The author never flinches from showing the evils that Sister Ping caused or had part in -- the deaths in transit, the gangsterism she participated in and gave rise to. But he also is careful to show how well-liked she was among her own communities, and how thousands of people were immensely grateful to her for giving them an opportunity (however risky) to come to America. What the book ultimately shows is a portrait of injustice, primarily to the immigrants themselves (who spend years detained, or become citizens in a trice, or find themselves deported, or who die on jungle trails in Thailand or end up with three kids and a two-car garage in Middle America -- all seemingly at random, based on the whim of individual immigration judges or the luck of their particular transit), and to the "Snakeheads" themselves, who seem as likely to get a dismissed or commuted sentence (like the case of Jerry Stuchiner, now practicing law in Nevada, who used to be an INS agent charged with investigating human trafficking until he was found selling fake passports to Chinese immigrants) as they are to spend the rest of their lives in prison (like Sister Ping). This book does a great job of telling compelling stories about human smuggling and those involved with it, while also aiding the reader to understand the breaks, gaps, and flaws in America's immigration system, and the price paid in human lives for those flawed policies. Highly recommended.

The Snakehead is a book that demands to be read. Once I picked it up, I didn't want to put it down. The story is true, and it's far more than just a book about a fatal shipwreck that happened off the NY Coast. The book is about the American Dream, and the immigrant drive to succeed in their adopted country, legally, illegally or otherwise. 'The Snakehead' is also a story about the way a small town and the people who live there found their lives forever transformed when a group of Chinese immigrants arrived in their community. I also didn't realize there were such distinct cultural variants among the Chinese people until I read this book. There's an entire group of Chinese known as the Fujianese, who speak their own language and have a separate culture from the mainstream Chinese culture. For this reason alone, the book was worth reading, as it gave me a new understanding of people from China.