• Justice For Our Neighbors
• Church-Based Legal Clinics
• Methodist Immigrant Ministry
• Caring for the Community
• Sites Approved for Immigration Clinics

At the Port of Seattle on January 11, 2000, the surviving stowaways from the Cape May huddle in front of the container in which they lived for 15 days. Photo: Harley Soltes/The Seattle Times

On January 10, 2000, officials of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) waited for the Cape May out of Hong Kong to dock in Seattle's harbor. Acting on a tip from undisclosed sources, they came to see if one of the containers in the ship's hold carried human cargo. When the suspect 40-foot-long, 8-foot-wide metal box was opened, a longshoreman described the devastating scene: "The people looked like they had just been beaten, absolutely wiped out. They could hardly stand." He said the soft-top cargo container was strewn with over a foot of garbage, boxes of vegetables, and jugs of water. Inside, two men and an elderly woman lay dead, casualties of the 15-day voyage.

The 15 survivors were Chinese laborers who had paid smugglers for passage into the United States.

The case of the Cape May stowaways is not unique. In a 15-day period in January, acting on tips, the INS seized 136 Chinese stowaways on eight different ships arriving at ports in Washington State, California, and British Columbia. The day after the Cape May arrived, another ship from Hong Kong, the Hanjin Yokohama, was found to be carrying 19 Chinese men in a cargo container. Their voyage appeared to have been easier than that of the Cape May stowaways. The container on the Cape May was buried beneath four others. The inhabitants apparently had little air, no light or heat, and little food or water. "These people were buried alive," said one INS official.

Once such Chinese immigrants reach the United States, they begin work, typically in restaurants or sweatshops, to repay the price of their voyage. This debt may be as much as $50,000 and may take years to work off. The smugglers have contracted with US partners for the workers. If the undocumented workers are caught by the INS, they must apply for political asylum or face immediate deportation. In the days before the Cape May's arrival, 246 Chinese stowaways were deported, some of whom had arrived in containers. The Cape May container made headlines because of the three deaths.

Most undocumented immigrants–even the 4000 unaccompanied minors caught by the INS each year–are either immediately deported or detained in US prisons. They do not receive the publicity and privileged treatment given to 6- year-old Elian Gonzales, whose mother drowned when the boat smuggling them in from Cuba to Florida capsized.

A lawyer in Portland, Oregon, tells of fighting for the release of a 15-year-old Chinese girl held in juvenile jail for seven months. She was among 105 people detained off the coast of Guam in April 1999. Eventually, with legal help, she was able to gain political asylum. Even so, she spent six more weeks in detention before being placed with a foster family.

She was handcuffed during her court appearances. "The girl was crying and she couldn't wipe the tears coming down her face," her lawyer, Mark Potter, observed. "Her only crime was that her parents put her on a boat so she could get a better life over here," he said.

Justice For Our Neighbors

According to Law, detainees were denied meaningful access to legal representation and grievance procedures, limited in access to family visits and medical care, and subject to abusive treatment by guards. Religious worship and educational services were denied.

The planning committee for the Chinese United Methodist Church's Immigrant Legal Clinic gather with staff members from the General Board of Global Ministries and the Just Neighbors Ministry outside the Chinese UMC in New York City's Chinatown.

Chinatown is a community encompassing several generations of immigrants, many of whom are isolated from the dominant US society by language or culture. When the possibility arose of opening a legal clinic to address the serious legal needs of the Chinatown community, the Chinese UMC welcomed the opportunity. Thus on Saturday, October 2, 1999, the Chinese United Methodist Church Immigration Legal Clinic opened its doors for business. A team of immigration lawyers from Justice For Our Neighbors supervises the clinic and provides ongoing training for the church volunteers. Pui Wong, chair of the legal clinic's planning committee, admitted: "We are starting modestly. We're able to see eight to twelve clients in a three-hour clinic one Saturday a month," she said. "But after the first few months, we hope to be able to expand our hours and refer clients to other services available within the community."

The clinic provides three types of services. The first focus is on immigration education. Videotapes are available covering a number of immigration topics, including asylum and deportation. Workshops and small-group meetings can be scheduled as needed. The second area of service is one-on- one consultation with clients, inspection of legal documents, and meetings with attorneys. During this process, the motto is "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Clients can avoid serious problems by dealing with situations in advance. Finally, the legal clinic also provides a referral service.

All clinic staff are volunteers. "The services we provide are free because God's love is free," Law notes. The planning committee at CUMC began work on the project in May 1999. Members went to Alexandria, Virginia, and Washington, DC, for a three-day training with volunteers from the other clinic sites. This training, which brought together 23 church volunteers, was funded by UMCOR. Says Pui Wong: "Normally many of these communities would not cross paths. But here we had a chance for mutual learning and sharing." CUMC members visited an immigration court and a model legal clinic, then lobbied on Capitol Hill with the help of staff from the General Board of Church and Society.

"I was amazed that so many people in the faith community would attend this training," Wong continued, "and explore ways to work with community-based organizations to accomplish our mutual goals. We don't hear enough about this kind of good work. Sometimes the faith community has gotten a bad rap. People hear about the controversies but not about the good work sponsored by the General Board of Global Ministries through Just Neighbors Ministry. The connections we are building are essential--not only in our local church but within our community, with other churches, and across the country. It's really helped us gain the perspective that we are not doing things in isolation."

Methodist Immigrant Ministry

Some of Five Points Mission's earliest programs in the 1850s included temperance meetings, a charity day school, and a mission chapel. The first Italian Methodist work in the United States began in 1889 when a relocated preacher of the Methodist Conference in Italy conducted services at the Five Points Mission. The earliest groups of Chinese immigrants, primarily from south China around Canton, were brought to the United States in the 1840s as cheap labor for large mining companies during the California gold rush. The second wave of immigrants labored under harsh and dangerous conditions to complete the most difficult section of the Transcontinental Railroad in the Sierra Nevada. By 1875, there were 105,000 Chinese laborers in the West. The completed railroad allowed the first significant numbers to move east.

New York's Chinatown, along with other US Chinatowns, formed in response to intense anti-Chinese sentiment in the 1870s and 1880s. Driven out of small towns and villages, the Chinese sought refuge in large cities, where they found mutual support and protection with other Chinese immigrants. As early as 1878, the pastor assigned to the Five Points Mission helped a young Cantonese ministerial student open a Chinese evening school to teach the English language and lead a Bible study. Five Points Mission continued to serve the Chinese immigrant population into the twentieth century. The current Five Points Mission building, now occupied by the Chinese United Methodist Church, was dedicated in 1921 and included schoolrooms, a gymnasium, offices, and a chapel.

Caring for the Community

Wong, chair of the clinic's planning committee, is an immigrant herself. Born in Hong Kong, she moved to the United States at age 20 and worked for 13 years as a social worker in Chinatown, particularly on issues of child welfare, family support, and prevention of child abuse and neglect. "The problems of undocumented Chinese workers are very difficult," she says, "and the immigration issues in the whole community are very complex. This is a very important ministry of the CUMC. Through it, we are letting the community in Chinatown know that this church cares. The mission of the church is to be in the community and to be with others, especially those in need. I think it's clear that, by doing this, we want people to know we're with them." Says Law: "The immigrant legal clinic is one more way for this church to care for the community, for the immigrants, for the sojourners, in the name of God who is merciful and just, who is the God of the oppressed."