עוד תמונות
יש באתר של רוזה (ראה קישור). לחוליות הללו גם חוליות golden venture. מסתבר שזה שם של ספינת מהגרים סינים בלתי חוקיים, בה קיפלו חוליות רבות כאלה. להלן סיפור מעיתון ישן בנושא (נלקח מארכיון הo-list)
October 11, 1996 Commentary: Paper Trail From Jail to Liberty By CLYDE HABERMAN NEW YORK -- This is the weekend for remembering Columbus' coming to America by ship in 1492. Wu Lu Zhong also came to America by ship, five centuries later, but instead of having a day named after him he landed in prison for three years. His mistake was to live in an age when immigration policies are not as lax as they were for those who sailed on the Spanish monarchy's tab. Wu was among the 286 Chinese illegal immigrants who packed themselves in 1993 into the infamous smuggling ship called the Golden Venture, only to fall 200 yards short of the New World when the freighter ran aground off the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens. You recall that tale of desperation and heartbreak. Ten men died trying to reach shore. A few made it to shore and escaped. Thirty others were granted asylum, and nearly 50 were released for one reason or another, many moving on to other countries. But most, nearly 200 people, were either deported to China or packed off to jails around the United States, which had become fed up with illegal immigrants. Wu went to the York County Prison in southern Pennsylvania, where local officials have made a cottage industry of boarding prisoners under a contract with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Now his odyssey has taken a new turn, suggesting that the Golden Venturers will make their mark on the United States for some time to come. On Tuesday evening he left his cell a free man, thanks to an I.N.S. decision reclassifying him as an "alien of extraordinary ability." As a skilled artist in Chinese paper sculpture, he was deemed to have a gift that can enrich American cultural life. He is the first Golden Venture passenger to receive this special designation. Indeed, three immigration lawyers working in his behalf -- John Assadi, Jun Wang and Helen Morris -- say he may well be the first person ever to earn this status from prison. "I feel elated," said Wu, a slender man of 34, on Thursday in his lawyers' office. Dressed in a borrowed sport shirt and jeans, he had traveled by bus from York to New York, marveling at the towns he whizzed past. "I feel," he said, as Wang translated, "that living conditions are much better here than in China." Obviously a master of understatement. With his new status he may apply for permanent residence, the coveted green card. If he gets it, and there is every reason to assume he will, he will be able to bring over his wife and young son from Fujian province in China. And because his is a test case, success could pave the way to an American life for many of the 45 Golden Venture Chinese who remain in York County Prison. Like Wu, once a set designer for the Fujian Operatic Company, they have become skilled in the Chinese folk art of paper-cutting. They have created thousands of pieces of art: remarkable sculptures of eagles, dragons, pagodas and ships, remarkable not just for their high quality but for the fact that they were crafted painstakingly out of scraps of toilet paper, magazines and threads from prison towels. For dyes, the prisoners sometimes used tea and grape juice. It took a while before prison officials trusted them with scissors, and then they did so only with close supervision. "But the guards gave us full support," Wu said. So did a long line of museum curators, who wrote letters to the INS supporting the argument that here was a person of special talent who would benefit the United States in freedom far more than in prison. On a separate track, like others from the Golden Venture, Wu had appealed for asylum, on the argument that he and his family had suffered persecution because of China's rigid one-child-per-couple controls. A few years ago his wife underwent a forced abortion and sterilization. Until now, U.S. immigration authorities have rejected claims that China's family-planning policy of itself justifies political asylum. That may change, for the new immigration law includes a little-noticed provision inserted by anti-abortion forces in Congress specifying that "resistance to a coercive population-control program" qualifies one as having been persecuted. It is clearly aimed at China (although to avert a tidal wave of Chinese immigration, the law also limits application of this provision to 1,000 refugees a year). To Wu, asylum claims are important, but not as critical for now as his search for a green card as an artist. Indeed, he said Thursday, he has questions even more pressing than what he will sculpture: where he will live and how he will eat.
