Broadcast: 23/08/99
The People Smugglers' Guide to Australia
Australia has long feared a kind of gravitational drift from the north. And this year the fears have been brought home by the arrival of large boatloads of people, particularly from Fujian in China. But these arrivals are not new. For years now illegals have been entering Australia. This program looks at how it is done, and who gets through.

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Reporter: Chris Masters, Jane Hutcheon
Producer: Janine Cohen
Research: Andrea Thomson, Charles Li, Jon Greenaway

Reporters: Chris Masters, Jane Hutcheon
Producer: Janine Cohen
Researchers: Andrea Thomson, Charles Li, Jon Greenaway

Chris Masters:
Australia has long feared a kind of gravitational drift from the north. There is anxiety within a continent so sparse, pressed so close to all this crowded poverty.

Amer:
From Jakarta they take a bus to Bali. From Bali they get a ship, they pay about $2,000 each one. They get a ship to Australia.

Chris Masters:
And this year the fears have been brought home by the arrival of large boatloads of people, particularly from Fujian in China.

Xiao Chen:
Having been on the boat for about a month, we were all exhausted and the hardships we had gone through were beyond description.

Chris Masters:
But these arrivals are not new. For years now as sure as the seasons, illegals have been entering Australia.

Rutu:
I've been to Australia six times, three of those times as a fisherman, and three times when I was taking illegal immigrants to Australia.

Chris Masters:
This program looks at how it is done, and who gets through.

Title: The People Smuggler's Guide to Australia

Title: Part One - The Kupang Run

Chris Masters:
The arrivals this year on the Australian East Coast and the consequent alarm in Canberra has bemused Australians who live in our North West. They joke about the taxi service from nearby Kupang in Indonesia. To Indonesian fishermen the run has become routine.

Naja:
There were nine people -- two little girls, one mother, two young men about my age and three men. Suddenly this person (the organiser) showed up with these people who wanted to be taken to Australia.

Chris Masters:
On the lookout three hours out of Darwin on a seven hour round trip is this Coastwatch Dash 8. It is crewed by two pilots and two electronic observers. Some 450 air miles west, over the Timor Sea, it approaches Ashmore Reef. That strip of scrub and sand is an outer extremity of Australia that's recorded as Ashmore Reef, but it's better known to these people as Hotel Ashmore, the taxi rank, the car park, the bus stop and so on. You are looking at what has become the most common land fall for illegal immigrants, or as they have been come to be known by the crew, SUNCs - Suspected Unlawful Non-Citizens. Alongside an Environment Australia research ship, 'Aurelia,' are two appropriately named SIEVs - Suspected Illegal Entry Vessels. Of around 1,000 people known to have arrived illegally by boat this year, almost 400 have been dropped here.

Andy Johnson, Coastwatch:
Generally there's quite a lot of people and quite often they come out and wave at the aircraft. They're not looking to hide.

Chris Masters:
Getting people off the reef is expensive. Two naval patrol boats are bringing 25 illegals from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, and their Indonesian crews, back to Darwin. They were plucked from the boats you saw back at Ashmore Reef. About one third of those arrivals may need genuine protection. For example, Iraqis fleeing Saddam Hussein are commonly allowed to stay. Indonesian crews who may have performed a humanitarian deed are mostly routinely gaoled.

Andrew Metcalfe, Border Control, Department of Immigration:
I don't see any contradiction at all. The Migration Act makes it very clear as to the circumstances which people should enter Australia, and while we obviously have obligations under the Refugees Convention to protect people who are refugees, that doesn't endorse people being brought here illegally.

Chris Masters:
A common departure point for the boats that approach North West Australia is around here. Kupang is the capital of West Timor. This remote corner of Indonesia was never well supported even when Jakarta had money. Teddy's Bar is a local landmark popular with its Australian guests, and it has been alleged, with those seeking a means of sneaking into Australia. The proprietor, Teddy, who made his money running a taxi business in Sydney in the '70s, is offended by the proposition.

Teddy:
Not true, and I can prove myself. And I like to go to Australia, put me in the machine, truth machine.
Q: The lie detector test?
A: Like that, whatever, I prefer to do that, because I have a good business, I've good settlement. Why I should involved in that?

Chris Masters:
Teddy did nominate one person who offered him a fee for delivering clients who wish to be smuggled.

Teddy:
Two months ago one man called Adis, he came to my bar and offer me with a lot of money if I can join the team with him. Also I saw he carry a lot of money with him, and he told me that, 'If you can bring one person tome, I pay you one million rupiah. I don't know why he came to me.

Chris Masters:
Adis had further contended he had corrupt Australian officials on his payroll to guarantee safe entry.

Teddy:
Q: Was he telling the truth, do you think?
A: I believe, yes, he tell me true, because he give me all these pictures, all these photos, all this - the boat it already exists, and he got all the pictures what is already took them, his all nine times.

Map: Indonesia showing locations of Jakarta, Bali and Kupang.

Chris Masters:
Kupang precipitates intrigue, suspicion and misinformation. Corruption abounds. It is hard to imagine the journey beyond could be more treacherous. Those wishing to be smuggled usually arrive here like this by ferry from Bali. They have followed a route determined by one of the organisers they most likely met in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta. The people smugglers' guide to Australia has very few prominent landmarks along the way. One is this area around McDonalds in Jalan Jaksa in central Jakarta. For many years now it has been a popular recruiting ground. Soon after arriving here the illegals are approached by spotters who usually take them to one of the small hotels or cafes nearby. David Mussry, a Perth Scotch College old boy who runs a local travel agency, says he has many requests for illegal passage through Kupang.

David Mussry:
I told them, 'Don't be stupid, that is taking a real risk. What if there are pirates? What if you are being robbed? Well, what if you don't get there? Who guarantees that you will get there?'

Chris Masters:
In the Bali Guest House next door we found Michael Williamson, an Australian charter boat skipper who has also been approached many times and offered $100,000 to do the Kupang run.

Michael Williamson, Australian Charter Boat Skipper:
Oh, I could've made a hundred, a couple of million if I'd of wanted to, yeah. Easy, without any problems whatsoever, none.
Q: Do you think any people would've taken up the offer?
A: For a hundred thousand, what do you think?

Chris Masters:
Michael says arranging false documentation is as easy as a trip to a local vendor.

Michael Williamson, Australian Charter Boat Skipper:
All I have to do, for instance, if I want this stamp made here, this one here, I just come to this man here and I say, 'Can you make me that stamp?' And within one hour he'll make it.
Q: What about a passport - could you get a passport made?
A: Oh, yeah, easy. You just say, 'This is what I've got here. Can you make one for me?' Yeah, within two days they can make one for you.

Chris Masters:
But since attention was drawn to this area, he says the big profiteers have moved on. The deals we are told are now done here, but still the organisers keep their distance, contactable only by cellular 'phone.

Andrew Metcalfe, Border Control, Department of Immigration:
Q: Do we know who they are?
A: In some cases we'd know who they are. In some cases we have got very good details of who they are.
Q: So why can't we prosecute them?
A: Extraterritoriality is one issue. If they were in Australia, and if the evidence could be amassed then, you know, that's a matter that we'd obviously pursue very vigorously. When people are outside Australia the ability of Australian law to touch them is of course, very limited.

Chris Masters:
So another journey, back to Kupang and on to another island. But this time we are more likely to find people with a regular role in the people smuggling business. Not all that much has changed on Roti in the last millennium. They have imported a bit of concrete, some electrical wire, and they're still working on the roads. We are searching for the village of Oelaba where for generations locals have been kept alive mostly by fishing. The people of Oelaba know Ashmore Reef, or Pule Passe as they call it, like their own backyard. That is why they are regularly recruited to make the journey, and why this family is in a predicament which is all to do with the price of fish.

Zachariah:
This year salted fish aren't selling well. There's no money. People aren't buying sea cucumbers any more, or if they do they only pay 1,000 rupiah. That's not enough to buy food.

Chris Masters:
Zachariah's son was arrested people smuggling on Ashmore Reef and is now doing eleven months in Darwin Gaol. His young wife is being supported by her father-in-law and the one million rupiah, or $300, he received for the journey. But they are not really complaining - in Oelaba $300 goes a long way.

Chris Masters:
Naja was also arrested after a perilous trip. In high seas in the monsoon season they had travelled on to Australia, unwilling to leave their Iraqi passengers stranded on Ashmore Reef.

Naja:
We felt sorry for them. There were three young children with them.

Chris Masters:
There are many hazards, not just for the passengers.

Martinus:
Of the seven people, two of them had compasses, and they sat in the bridge and threatened us. If we took the wrong course, if we didn't go in the direction they wanted, they threatened us. They guarded me with a machete, so we had to keep going.

Chris Masters:
Martinus is now back at his village after four months in gaol. Not only was he forced to bypass Ashmore Reef to carry on towards the mainland, he ended up being paid only half the promised $300. There are many such stories.

Omar:
To tell the truth I'm a poor man, so if someone was to pay me a lot, of course I'd have to go. It's a matter of making enough to live, especially with things the way they are now, with the financial crisis.

Chris Masters:
Omar says he has been into Australian waters seven times and arrested for smuggling on three occasions.

Omar:
Once they were Pakistanis. After that, the second time, they were from Sri Lanka. The most recent ones were also Pakistanis.

Chris Masters:
Intended arrivals are now taking more risks. Coastwatch has sighted upturned vessels, and now Australia's Christmas Island is seeing more traffic. In the last fortnight 140 illegals turned up. A few weeks before were landed survivors of a boat tractored towards the island and as it transpired, tragedy.

Andrew Metcalfe, Border Control, Department of Immigration:
That's our understanding, that they were, that two vessels came across, that the crew abandoned the 20 or so Sri Lankans close to Christmas Island, and that difficulties then beset the vessel and 15 people ended up drowned.

Chris Masters:
The Indonesian boats commonly carry no navigation aids, there is no radio and no life rafts. But fishermen and passengers alike seem to fear not their mutual treachery, the unpredictable seas, nor the unseaworthiness of the boats. And something else frightens them not one bit - Australian gaols.

Teddy:
They said, 'Hotel - good hotel there. They have a steak, big steak. They have ice cream. They can play sport. They don't mind if they go for a hundred times.'

Omar:
Well in prison they looked after our health. They'd take us to hospital. The only problem was they didn't give us the money we should have got.

Martinus:
I really liked it because they were never rough with us, they never even spoke harshly to us.

Chris Masters:
Martinus shows his photos of his prison term and his first flight ever as if they were holiday snaps. The only complaint is Australia's removal of their right to keep the prisoner's allowance which often meant we paid them more than they received from the smugglers. Australia has also introduced tougher sentences, now a maximum of 20 years' gaol.

Omar:
As I said before, to survive, I'm willing to go to gaol.

Naja:
If they paid me a lot I would go again.

Chris Masters:
Despite the knowledge of the stiffer penalties, we learn while on Roti that another boat has been commissioned to sail for Ashmore Reef from Kupang. A Kupang based Australian charter boat skipper explained how it is the invisible organisers who make the real money.

Bob Goulding, Kupang Based Charter Skipper:
They'll go out and they'll buy the boat, and then they'll put a few people on it and do it, and the actual people who take them they probably get the least of the money at all, and some of the money going out is five, ten thousand dollars.

Chris Masters:
Having arrived on the ferry from the north, the illegals usually check into small hotels in Kupang where they keep their head down during the day. An assembled boat load of 20 persons could pay their organiser around $100,000, or 450 million rupiah. Once ready they will file down to the beach, one by one at night, where they board a motor boat which transfers them to the commissioned fishing boat.

Martinus:
They said they'd give us each two million. When we counted the money there was only one million each.

Chris Masters:
The next day we are on an extraordinary drive. Local police with not the budget to afford a vehicle of their own have borrowed ours. They explain there is not the money to properly police the smugglers. Their own fleet amounts to one dinghy. But last night the Indonesian Navy helped out by seizing the vessel moored alongside. On board there is left the crew, some provisions and mattresses, and traces of the 66 persons from the Middle East who were taken off the night before. There is also some alarm on the part of local authorities with the appearance of this man. He hunts us and the police away. You might have recognised him as the man Adis, alleged to be one of the organisers. Police estimate the organisers' profit from this journey could have been over $300,000. But they say they can't do much about him without more evidence. This they are trying to extract from the Middle Eastern people who have been taken to a local hotel. But as we discover, the Middle Eastern people are making no admissions. The 66 people crammed aboard the tiny boat claim they were on a holiday cruise and had no intentions of travelling to Australia.

Andrew Metcalfe, Border Control, Department of Immigration:
Well some of the people may well have been lawfully in Indonesia, possibly as tourists and to the extent that the Indonesian law allows their detention in those circumstances is something that the Indonesian authorities know best about.

Chris Masters:
The next day at Kupang Airport some of them are sighted boarding a flight back to Bali. As it happens we head north on the same plane, and within the neutrality of the skies, one of the men, speaking only for himself, becomes more candid.

Jaafa:
I try to go to Australia, but not with this group, and just I am here looking. I have no, I don't know how to get to Australia, so I am here looking.
Q: Why would you like to go to Australia? What do you know about Australia?
A: The first of all I like it to get my freedom, because I have no country.
Q: What would happen if you went back to Iraq?
A: They will kill me.

Chris Masters:
We left Jaafa and his friends and continued to Bangkok. We learned that within a week the majority of his company had bought their way out and made it to Ashmore Reef.

Andrew Metcalfe, Border Control, Department of Immigration:
What we do know is that 44 of those people soon after arrived in Australia illegal. Now that's a matter of considerable concern to us, and we have made representations to the Indonesian government asking them to fully investigate what actually happened.

Chris Masters:
At the same time a great many more illegals were making a run which costs more, but has even greater success.

Title: Part 2 - The Bangkok Run

Prof. Ron Skeldon, Consultant, Int. Organisation of Migration:
I mean, the high visibility routes are these rusting boats that struggle across the Pacific, but the majority of the migrants are moved almost certainly by air.

Andrew Metcalfe, Border Control, Department of Immigration:
Air arrivals don't receive the publicity that boat arrivals do because they happen every day around Australia in ones or twos. Sometimes they're a larger group, but usually it is just one or two people coming through, usually on false documentation.

Chris Masters:
The main points of departure are Singapore, and from here, in Bangkok. In this quarter, 'Little Arabia', demand for passage has created a thriving industry which supplies the means. For those desperately seeking citizenship a first stop can be here, the Grace Hotel, where it's alleged, you can find people who will sell you jut about anything - false passports being the special of the week. This young man, an Iraqi who makes a living as a runner ferrying passports, confirmed their accounts. He told us passports, credit cards, employment records and so on can be tailor made to suit the appearance of the client, starting at a price of around 4,500 US dollars. He nominated this address as another meeting point for the network he works for, made up of Iranians, Palestinians and Pakistanis. On offer is a complete menu of false identities.

Trevor Alt, Forensic Document Examiner, Department of Immigration:
There's the genuine article. As we said, there's just the UV features that have been printed into the paper, but there are no, there's no sign of the watermark coming through at all. With the counterfeit the paper itself is quite bright and the watermark, or the appearance of the watermark, has been simulated by printing, and when you compare the two together, you can quite clearly see the difference between the two.

Chris Masters:
180 countries, each with many versions of their own passport, makes Trevor Alt's work challenging.

Trevor Alt, Forensic Document Examiner, Department of Immigration:
Virtually any document is capable of being forged - airline tickets can be. For the most part it's that type of travel document, whether it be a resident's card, even military orders for travel, certificates of identity that don't conform to the normal passport format.

Chris Masters:
But there are dangers here too. Jabar Kadir agreed to purchase a passport here in Bangkok's Little Arabia, making an advance payment of $4,000.

Jabar Kadir:
He said, 'Give me the money and after two days I will bring you the plane ticket, passport, visa and everything you need. I will transfer you to another country and from there a foreign passport and plane ticket will be made ready for you to travel to Australia straightaway.' I gave him the money and passport and have never seen my passport since.

Chris Masters:
Amer is another of a legion of refugees from Saddam Hussein's Iraq, stuck in this no man's land. Amer has had his application for refugee status rejected by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. He is now without a country and a passport.

Amer:
I sold my passport because you know when I came here I have a little bit of money, so after a few days my money is finished. I don't know anyone here before, I don't know Hussain, I don't know anyone here.

Chris Masters:
His friend Hussain is also stateless. Having bought an illegal passage on a boat bound for Australia he became stranded in Malaysia, and thrown in gaol for two years where he was robbed and beaten.

Amer (translating for Hussain):
He said the life in the gaol in Malaysia is too bad. There are no medicine for the people of the sick. There's no medicine. If you are sick they cannot send you to the hospital. They take your money if you want anything, if you want even cigarette.

Chris Masters:
In Thailand as many as one million people make up the community of the dispossessed. On a busy day at Australia's Bangkok Embassy 1,000 people wait in line. Making the decision about who is or is not allowed in can be agonising.

Andrew Metcalfe, Border Control, Department of Immigration:
The tough part in that particular area is working out who is planning a genuine visit to Australia and who was simply seeking to visit Australia to stay illegally.

Chris Masters:
It is agony also for those rejected, who have lost everything, including their sense of belonging.

Amer:
Actually I want just, you know, I want home, I want peace, everywhere - I don't care the place. I just want to live my life very quiet, yeah. I want to make a family because I'll get to 30 years, my life is finished now. Just I want a small home, peace, and happiness too.

Chris Masters:
While the flights from Bangkok and beyond account for most numbers of illegals arriving in Australia, it is these foreign fields that have caused the most concern in Canberra. The Fujian Province is a southern coastal region of mainland China. The 30 million overseas Chinese have strong roots in the province. For centuries the Fujianese have proved themselves keen travellers, and in the last months there have been further outward ripples.

Title: Part 3 - The Fujian Run

Prof. Ron Skeldon, Consultant, Int. Organisation of Migration:
The movement to Australia is part of a broader pattern of increased migration out of China. One reason you might think of increased movement to Australia is associated with your Olympics in that there are rumours that the Olympics will create a lot of jobs.

Mark Craig, Justice Studies, Qld. University of Technology:
It is easier to travel, the borders have definitely opened up, but there is a supply and demand issue here. There are more people willing or wanting to travel than the system caters for.

Andrew Metcalfe, Border Control, Department of Immigration:
The vast majority of the people we've seen are simply coming here with false hopes and false expectations.

Map: Showing conventional sea routes and new East Coast route.

Chris Masters:
Historically the routes to Australia have involved island hopping, the ultimate point of arrival, mostly the north. The recent trips from Fujian have followed a different path which bring them wide of Australia's eastern shore, avoiding aerial surveillance before the run for the cover of our more populated areas. The chart room of the Kayuen shows more than usual preparation. The May 17 arrival of this converted Russian freighter was the most sophisticated attempted entry so far.

Andrew Metcalfe, Border Control, Department of Immigration:
It was alarming because it was a substantial new trend. I think that there's a new level of organisation, there's a new level of far involved - we're talking about people paying 30 to 40,000 US dollars - 10,000 up front and the rest to be paid of down the track.

Chris Masters:
Another craft had been purchased to transfer them at sea. Once landed there was supposedly a network in place which would have hidden the illegals and put them to work. When captured the 69 Chinese crammed sardine-like below, appeared to be relieved. This man, now back in China, shared with 100 people a similar, 26 day journey.

Xiao Chen:
The journey was absolutely dangerous. It was a small boat making its way in such a huge and sometimes stormy sea. As for whether people died or not, I don't know. I didn't talk to anybody on the boat. I was trapped.

Chris Masters:
Captured on the East Coast, he was detained here at Port Headland in the West. He delayed deportation by engaging a Legal Aid lawyer.

Xiao Chen:
If you had a court case you could stay for a longer period of time and I wanted to stay a bit longer.

Chris Masters:
In the Fujian county of Chang Le, Lin Zheng Yu thinks constantly about attempting a similar trip.

Lin Zheng Yu:
It's a household topic, who has gone where, which country, somebody has arrived in the USA, how much money he has made, or news about a certain boat seized by the authorities, where the people were detained, how many people were on the boat etc.

Chris Masters:
It is not that everyone finds this place politically oppressive, it is not that all fear for their personal well being, it is not even that Lin is hungry, or desperately poor.

Prof. Ron Skeldon, Consultant, Int. Organisation of Migration:
I think we should stress that it's very rarely the poorest who do move. That increased movement is primarily the result of increased aspirations, of the very development of Southern China. So it is not a movement from the poorest part of China, it's a movement out of some of the most dynamic parts of China, or on the periphery of these dynamic regions such as parts of Fujian Province in Southern China.

Chris Masters:
Lin Zheng Yu has no wish to work the rice fields. What he wants is opportunity.

Lin Zheng Yu:
If I could go to work in Australia I might earn 6,000 to 8,000 yuan a month (approximately $1,500). That would mean tens of thousands of yuan a year.

Chris Masters:
The Lin family already have their father working illegally in Australia, but they claim a bad gambling habit means he only rarely sends money home.

Lin Zheng Yu:
In a word he always has excuses and lies to mother. Sometimes he would say, 'This month I have to pay the debt.' Or, 'I have to go see a doctor.' Or, ' I have to get a refugee certificate.'

Chris Masters:
The Chinese know this area as a land of fish and rice, but since economic reforms and the opening of travel opportunities, this other time honoured industry has been given impetus. Craning above the paddy fields, each taller and prouder than the next, are Fujian's many monuments to repatriated wealth. Locals say 99% of this construction is due to money remitted from overseas.

Lin Qing Fang:
About 80 per cent of the people around us are pretty well off. A person with one person abroad would have about 15,000 yuan (approximately $2,800). A person with two or three people abroad would be able to have several tens of thousands of yuan a month.

Chris Masters:
The locals have no trouble finding the little snakeheads, the recruiters: they are everywhere. Newer travellers say that they are no longer being asked for a deposit.

Prof. Ron Skeldon, Consultant, Int. Organisation of Migration:
International criminal syndicates have discovered that you can make very large amounts of money with virtually no penalty. The penalties are derisory.

Chris Masters:
This young man was recently drawn into the trade.

Guang Ying:
Big snakeheads are grouped into a set, one stays here, the other is stationed overseas. The big snakehead in China would recruit a number of small snakeheads who would approach people asking if they want to go overseas.

Mark Craig, Justice Studies, Qld. University of Technology:
This is how this particular woman finished up. She was kidnapped, repeatedly raped - pack raped - over a two week period. You'll notice here she has a finger missing.

Chris Masters:
Mark Craig warns that with the traffic we import increasing violence.

Mark Craig, Justice Studies, Qld. University of Technology:
When she placed the 'phone call to her mother in China, they chopped her finger off with a meat cleaver to add some emphasis to her screams.

Chris Masters:
This woman was kidnapped by a New York gang who blackmailed her mother back in China.

Mark Craig, Justice Studies, Qld. University of Technology:
She was later choked with a telephone cord and left for dead.

Title: Part 4 - The Australian Underground

Chris Masters:
It is impossible to know how accurate is the official estimate of 50,000 illegals surviving here underground. While we have not seen the gang violence that has overwhelmed Chinatowns abroad, the illegals are recruited into criminality whether they wish it or not.

Prof. Ron Skeldon, Consultant, Int. Organisation of Migration:
They are criminals to the extent they have broken the law in that they've entered the country illegally. They are also working illegally in the destination. From that point of view I suppose they are criminals, but they are not, they wouldn't see themselves as criminals, but that they are trying to improve themselves.

'Su', Illegal Immigrant:
I think we have to take the responsibility for this, but we also are innocent, also victims.

Chris Masters:
It was not too difficult for 'Four Corners' to break into the illegal underground, no more difficult it seems than it is for them to sell their labour.

'Su', Illegal Immigrant:
They're using you and they know it's a very good chance for exploitation.

Graphic: Translation of advertisement in Chinese newspaper.

Chris Masters:
Women are commonly placed into the sex industry. Community newspapers regularly advertise 'fresh' women from China. Others work on assembly lines, building sites, in restaurant kitchens, behind sewing machines, cleaning offices and picking fruit.

Prof. Ron Skeldon, Consultant, Int. Organisation of Migration:
Where there's a demand there'll be a supply, and in many ways the traffickers are responding to demand - a demand for labour.

Jack, Former Illegal Immigrant:
Mine is an unusual and lucky story I would say.

Chris Masters:
After entering illegally Jack returned to Malaysia and made a successful legal entry.

Jack, Former Illegal Immigrant:
Tax returns? There's no problem with that because you can get a tax number from the tax office in the beginning. And then going to the accountant is a bit of a hassle because they ask you a lot of questions and you have to tell them lies.
Q: So how close did you come to being caught?
A: Oh, I would say this close.

Anna, Former Illegal Immigrant:
I do good job and he start making trouble for me because he wan to sleeping with him. I can't because I'm married.

Tom, Former Illegal Immigrant:
They just see you like a servant, maybe like a work machine or something. So it's, I just feeling very, very sad all the time. Also if we get some small accident, you know, I usually not report because if I report too much, you know, they can sack, you know, or something.

Anna, Former Illegal Immigrant:
We scared because if any trouble we can't report to police, because we're scared, you know. If we report to police, police can say, 'You are illegal and I send you to China,' or something.

Chris Masters:
Whereas the detention centres are more commonly populated by non-whites, the reality is the more common illegals are our cousins from the UK and the United States.

Joel, English Backpacker:
See, a lot of people just by a one-way ticket to get over to Australia so they haven't got a return ticket. Then it's all right for them to stay on because they aren't booked to go home. That makes it a bit easier.

Chris Masters:
The nominated 50,000 illegals in Australia are those identified as having overstayed visas. The official estimate of illegal Chinese is around 2,000, yet the community's estimate is around 10,000. The figures can't account for those who might have arrived undetected, say by boat. While we acknowledge we intercept only a tiny percentage of imported heroin, we claim 100% success for catching seaborne human cargo.

Michael Williamson, Australian Charter Boat Skipper:
Oh, yeah, of course they do, yeah. It's easy to get into Australia undetected - very, very easy.

Bob Goulding, Kupang Based Charter Skipper:
Q: How do you know they get through?
A: Well you get reports back that there was 10 or 15 caught on Ashmore Reef, and you know that there was probably 50 or 100 in the area that were trying to go, you know. Well what happened to the others?

'Su', Illegal Immigrant:
Q: Do you know people who've arrived by boat?
A: I know a few boat - they come from Darwin by boat and they successful in to get here.
Q: So you've met these people?
A: I met them before, but now I've lost contact because they hiding somewhere else.

Andrew Metcalfe, Border Control, Department of Immigration:
We locate around about 12,000 illegals each year and we talk to those people about how they came here. There's no evidence that anyone has come here in an undetected way.

Chris Masters:
Although they are here, Australia's illegal community is not at home. Like the others waiting to come, or trapped between, they are also without a compass, as the voices from the underground lament.

'Su', Illegal Immigrant:
Actually we don't know the situation here, and we don't know where can ask for help - the tradition in China, the people help themselves. I think most of us is very sorry about these things, and we don't want to do this.

Mr 'J', Illegal Immigrant:
I think we are not bad people. We are not lazy people. I want to ask the Australian government why it doesn't let us miserable Chinese stay? Why?

'Su', Illegal Immigrant:
This country, it's a very good country and have good law, and we are honest people. We don't want to break the law, but we have no idea what we can do. Everything is fair here - I mean not us - if people are resident here, but we are living in the shadow, everything's different for us.

Andrew Metcalfe, Border Control, Department of Immigration:
There are people there living in a grey world, without status in Australia, who are presumably constantly concerned that they may be located, who are being exploited by people because of their illegal status. They must be in a pretty miserable situation and our advice is, 'Go home.' Or if you believe that you have got grounds to stay in Australia, at least come and see us.

Chris Masters:
Australia is improving its ability to detect overstayers, but maintaining control of our borders calls for action beyond our own horizon. Yesterday another Australian delegation headed north to seek improved cooperation in Indonesia. Budgets have already been allocated to train Indonesians, like these airline counter staff who watch for bodgie documents. Stopping the trade does call for more than the gaoling of impoverished Indonesian fishermen, those who profit the least yet pay the highest penalties. Catching the real profiteers, countering the ever changing routes and strategies, confronting the ignorance, tyranny, poverty and corruption that drives the trade, will make guarding our 37,000 kilometres of coastline seem the easy part.