He estimated there are 500,000 potential illegal aliens waiting in Moscow, 20,000 more warehoused in Prague, 30,000 in Austria, and perhaps 100,000 in France. Most are ethnic Chinese who pay smugglers as much as $40,000 a head to be brought unlawfully to the United States where they blend in and find jobs with the help of counterfeit documents.
"There are huge numbers in the pipeline, warehoused by smugglers, waiting until a new route opens up or documents become available or an official is bribed," says Perrito. The Chinese alien smuggling groups are usually the same tightly organized, clan-based crime families known as triads that have been known for years for their opium and heroin smuggling.
Lately, these gangs have even invaded Italy, the home of the Sicilian mafia, to use as a base for their lucrative illegal alien smuggling operations to the west. Law enforcement officials report growing evidence of this new phenomenon in cities like Rome, Turin, and Florence, where the triads have also engaged in their traditional activities of drug trafficking, extortion, and prostitution. "We're just beginning to understand the scope of the Chinese crime operations," says Adelchi D'Ippolito, the magistrate leading the Rome investigation into local triad activities. "They are strong and organized." Italy has been caught unprepared with few Chinese-speaking police officers and therefore few ways to obtain information about the triads, whose foreign language and code of silence present formidable barriers to traditional law enforcement techniques.
(Washington Times, April 4, 1995; Newark Star Ledger, July 30, 1995)