Smuggling of Immigrants
The Triads are also primarily responsible for smuggling illegal immigrants into the Chinatowns of Australia, Europe, and North America, often from China and Vietnam. These Asian smugglers are called "snakeheads". In order to pay for their passage, many of these immigrants end up indentured in "under the table" low-wage (often lower than the minimum wage) service jobs, e.g., as restaurant waiters or dishwashers, masseuses in massage parlors, prostitutes, and garment sweatshops.
Such social problems have been the subject for several Hollywood police films such as The Corruptor (set in New York City's Chinatown but filmed in Toronto's), starring Hong Kong star Chow Yun-fat, and Year of the Dragon with Mickey Rourke.
Read more about this topic: Social Problems In Chinatown
Famous quotes containing the word immigrants:
“Even American women are not felt to be persons in the same sense as the male immigrants among the Hungarians, Poles, Russian Jews,—not to speak of Italians, Germans, and the masters of all of us—the Irish!”
—Mary Putnam Jacobi (1842–1906)