The paragraph above is the opening of a National Review article, “Invasion of a Certain Kind,” published in the issue of April 30, 2001. Other items in its first few paragraphs included the sentencing of a Dutch truck driver for the murder of 58 Chinese illegal immigrants found dead of suffocation in Dover when his container was opened in 2000; the murder of babies thrown into the Adriatic by people-smugglers evading pursuit; and, in 1993, the discovery near New York of a ship, the Golden Venture, carrying 300 Chinese illegal migrants, who had paid between $20,000 and $30,000 each for their passage.
Most of the illegal arrivals on the Golden Venture sought asylum and did so successfully. Eight years after they were detected, none of those on the Golden Venture had returned home. We had not the heart to send back people who had sacrificed and suffered so much to flee poverty, to escape persecution, or simply to “better themselves.”
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