U.S. ILLEGAL POPULATION.

Waikato Times, Volume 102, Issue 17221, 3 October 1927, Page 2

U.S. ILLEGAL POPULATION.

1,000,000 NO RIGHT THERE. SMUGGLED GIRLS. (From a Correspondent.) NEW YORK, August 28. Almost every ship leaving the United States carries back to their homelands a few unwelcome guests. Some of them have tried to enter this country legally and have failed to meet the rigid requirements, but the large majority have been smuggled across the Canadian or Mexican borders or have deserted from some ship. It is estimated that as many as 1000 succeed in entering the country surreptitiously every d.ay, either by boat or aeroplane. A Budget Committee of Congress is making a tour along the borders with Mr Carl White, of the Labour Department, who is seeking to justify the department's claims for a greatly increased appropriation to combat smuggling. At present 750 Customs agents are expected to guard 7000 miles of Canadian and Mexican, borders. The smugglers maintain agencies in the European capitals and actively solicit clients for their forces along the borders. Poles and. Russians are advised to come through Canada, where most of them are concentrated along the Detroit River, io be ferried across by smugglers, who charge about £2O for each passenger. Greeks, Syrians, Italians, and members of other Southern races are gathered in Cuba, whence they can be taken by boat to Florida or landeti in Mexico to cross the Rio Grande. This is a more risky route, since smugglers have been known, when fearing dctectien, to abandon their charges on barren islands in the Gulf of Mexico. The most lucrative traffic in aliens is found on the Pacific coast of Mexico, where most Chinese enter. It is easier to detect Chinese .than people of other races, and the smugglers are accordingly demanding as much as £IOO each from the Orientals.

Chinese girls bring particularly high fees to smugglers because of the demand for them in the Chinese restaurants of San Francisco.

The invasion by infiltration is augmented appreciably by seamen who desert their ships, in American ports. So great has beta this infiltration that Mr Davis, the United States Secretary' of Labour, estimates that there are now fully a million persons in the United States who have no legal right to remain.