Golden Venture

The documentary Golden Venture was filmed with the intent to use an infamous example of an attempt to smuggle Chinese immigrants into the United States in order to shed light on the lives of those immigrants and many like them, the reason they were escaping the country, the difficulties they faced throughout their journey, the consequences resulting from partaking in the voyage and the reaction of the American public and officials to the incident. The documentary follows a simple timeline structure, beginning with brief background stories of four specific passengers of the Golden Venture ship immigrants, details about the Golden Venture’s journey to America and the ship’s “arrival” by running aground by Breezy Point on June 6^th, 1993. The documentary then followed these four immigrants through jail, talked to the Americans who supported their plight for freedom and further followed their journeys in the United States or back in China until present day.

The movies got right to the point from the very start – I had never heard of this incident before and it grasped my attention when the frightening footage of people jumping off the ship in New York was played or the mug shots of certain snakeheads were shown and the entire crime scheme was discussed. At this point, the director had established a solid background story, and what followed were the emotional testimonies of the individual passengers and how they were dealing with the incidents going on around them. From the very beginning, the documentary was divided clearly into sections that were introduced by means of a picture and a title, and were thoroughly explained. In the end, however, it seemed that the director was leaning towards stirring negative feelings towards American immigration policy. Personally, I felt terrible after hearing of the futile hardships many of the ship’s passengers had to endure, only to be turned away in large groups.

The details mentioned throughout the movie were brutal, unfiltered and powerful, such as the government sterilizing passengers upon being deported back to China shortly after surviving the brutal voyage during which they starved, were abused and faced storms and unhealthy conditions. Additionally, the shocking details of how much each person spent on this life-threatening voyage and the incredible journey each had to make from China into Thailand silently hinted at how destitute conditions were in communist China at the time of the voyage. The film was a powerful concoction of stunning facts and emotional testimonies and was effective in its message.

Sentenced Home

The documentary Sentenced Home, tells the story of Cambodian refugees who escaped to America following the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge massacres in the 1980’s. It follows the stories of several of these immigrants who came to America as children and grew up with American culture and values, as well as the language. Now, as many of the refugees are being deported back to Cambodia, these immigrants, now young adults, are forced to prepare themselves to the possibility of having to leave their families behind in America and go to a homeland that is completely foreign to them in terms of language, culture and economy.

The documentary was formatted in an interesting way – the director was able to provide factual information throughout the beginning of the film and carry on into a personal and emotional perspective of what each of the three immigrants were going through. The director effectively raised awareness of the problem at hand – the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act which, in essence, forces the deportation of felon criminals who are non-citizens after being released from prison. The director provided a very opposing outlook on the law, highlighting three of the deportees’ struggles. Kim Ho Ma, after facing jail time for firing a gun in self-defense as a teen, was forced to leave his family and try to make it in Cambodia, where jobs are far and few in between. Loeun Lun was separated from his wife and children when deported. Many Uch, a man who organizes baseball leagues and opened a pool hall in order to keep Cambodian-American teens from going down the wrong path, is forced to wait, not knowing when he will be deported.

The use of these three examples was very powerful. I was infuriated by this policy, how U.S. officials don’t even take into consideration how each one of the refugees has made amends or settled down or impacted his community. It saddened me to see the struggles that each one of the Cambodians endured and made me question American policy to the extent that I researched it online after watching the documentary. Unlike the Golden Venture, the documentary didn’t end up on a positive note, which was an effective move by the director but was a bit heavy to process. Altogether however, Sentenced Home was powerful and informatory and focused on appealing to the audience emotionally.

Coney Island is the westernmost barrier island of Long Island, stretching for approximately four miles. It is an artificial peninsula, connected to Brooklyn by a landfill. The neighborhood of Coney Island started off as a Dutch settlement known for its abundance of rabbits from which the name “coney” is derived from.  In the 1800’s, it was a popular natural park until several structures began to be built at the turn of the century. These structures were ultimately demolished in order to make room for a boardwalk and easy beach access. In the 1940’s, Robert Moses opposed plans for making the area one of entertainment and proposed building residential housing; a proposal that ultimately resulted in a fusion of both ideas – 18 to 24 story housing project were constructed while the amusement park the area is known for was continuously expanded. The construction of Ocean Parkway and the completion of the Stillwell Avenue subway station ushered in a diverse settlement of commuting workers. Today, the neighborhood is home to several beaches including Sea Gate, which is one of two of New York’s only gated communities – the other one being Breezy Point located in the Rockaway neighborhood of Queens. They are very similar socially; the average family and household size for both the Rockaways and Coney Island is about three people. About forty percent of people in the households are the owners and about fifteen to twenty percent are spouses of the household owners. With regards to demographics, the Rockaways have a nearly 1:1 ratio of white to black people, while Coney Island has a ratio of 4:1. Although the Rockaways have a majority Irish population and Coney Island has a majority Russian population, both share a strong population of Italian people, close to six or seven percent. Most people living in either “beach community” are within the ages of 25 and 54, and over seventy percent of the entire population is over the age of 18.

The Rockaway area of Queens is located in the Rockaway Peninsula, which connects to the South Shore of Long Island.  It began in the 1800’s as two separate villages know as Holland an Hammels, which were incorporated into the borough of Queens at the turn of the century. In the early 1900’s, much like Coney Island, Rockaway was home to an amusement park. A subway line was extended into the neighborhood and, coupled with the building of the Marine Parkway Bridge and the Cross Bay Veterans Memorial Bridge, executed by Robert Moses in the 1930’s, attracted a permanent commuter resident population to the area. In the 1950’s, the 13 story Hammel Houses were constructed, ushering in a diverse population of commuting workers similar to those settling in Coney Island at the time. Today, the commuting population remains in the two neighborhoods and many of those workers have similar jobs. Approximately thirty percent of the populations of these two communities work in the education service, health care, and social assistance fields. Since that time Rockaway and Coney Island have seen similar statistical trends in the economic, housing and demographic categories and are two parallel beach communities today. Most of the income falls within the range of $35,000-$99,000. The majority of family income lies between $35,000-$75,000 (two “census” brackets of income data). The Rockaways do have a higher percentage of people attaining income within the higher bracket of the overall range ($50,000-$75,000), while Coney Island has a higher percentage in the lower bracket ($35,000-$49,999). Much of both populations live in homes that are worth from either $300,000-$499,999, or $500,000-$999,999; the majority of these homes were built between 1960-1969. Both neighborhoods are pleasant beach communities and are a unique taste of New York City.

The Tenement Museum tour was eye-opening to say the least. I have read and learned about the conditions many immigrants lived in, but never did I have a chance to experience it first hand. Growing up and living in an apartment all of my life, I am no stranger to a crowded living room or a line to use the bathroom; there were many times during the past eighteen years when I would ask my parents about moving into a house or trying to convince them to move into a bigger space and leave the apartment for me. The few hours between me getting home from school and my father arriving home from works were my personal time with the couch in the living room where I could watch Sports Center uninterrupted. Visiting the Tenement Museum, however, made those complaints and desires seem very irrelevant. Seeing how I could have been sharing a sofa with two other people, all three of us leaning our legs on kitchen chairs to maximize the amount of space available, made me appreciate very much my own bed that I don’t have to share with anyone. Additionally, I found that I could compare my own summer job to how it would be like to work in one of these tenements during the summer. When the class visited the museum, it was around a chilly forty degrees outside and it still managed to be somewhat stuffy inside the museum apartment. During the summer, when temperatures peak a hundred degrees, I am usually working in a restaurant kitchen, where even though many open windows and fans provide cool breezes, one will work up a decent sweat after scurrying around for ten to fifteen minutes. I could not imagine, however, working and living my entire day in such conditions, outdoor heat accompanied by the indoor heat of burning furnaces and stoves, and the constant stench of sweat mixed with carcinogenic coal fumes fueling me through the day. Thinking about how many families had to live and work in such conditions constantly amazes me.

Besides all of the setbacks of living in a tenement household, there were defiantly several perks that came from living in communities where this form of housing was abundant. Ingenuity was a necessity for making it from day to day under such conditions, and people strongly believed in a hard days work as a means to make ends meet, two things that are losing face in today’s society. Additionally, a lot of families in a given tenement shared similar cultural, religious or ethnic backgrounds, giving the living space an air of community and unity. For example, the tenement museum, when inhabited, was home to Jewish residents, many who worked for Jewish employers or who themselves employed Jewish workers. Here, the Yiddish language was preserved and Sabbath was celebrated every Saturday when work allowed so. Families were also very close knit and were humbled by their circumstances. Out of all this, many stories of families, whether several years down the line or several generations down the line, one day reaching the “American Dream” and moving out of the dense city areas show that even though living conditions were harsh, they were overcome by their residents’ strong will and determination and were a form of catalyst for families to work towards finding a more comfortable place to live.

After the end of the bloody Second World War, the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.) maintained strict communist rule, under which all countries within the Communist Bloc (Russia, Eastern Europe and parts of Asia) suffered in terms of political corruption and economic downfall. Any Russians who managed to escape immigrated to western countries such as the U.S. However, since the U.S.S.R. had such strict restrictions as to who could leave the country, the number of Russian immigrants coming to the U.S. dramatically decreased compared to the past half century. For example, in 1970, there were 50,000 Russian-born immigrants living in Brooklyn compared to the 220,000 living there in 1930. Similar declines occurred throughout other significant Russian populations throughout the United States.

After 1985, during the rule of Mikhail Gorbachev and his attempts in modern reform, the formerly thriving economy of the Soviet Union began to decline due to inflation and shortages in goods and budget. In 1991, the U.S.S.R., along with its economy, collapsed; Russia, along with all of the former satellite countries, became a free country. But conditions grew worse.

By 1993, forty to fifty percent of all Russian citizens were living in poverty. Crime and corruption grew and status of living sullied. By 1998, the country witnessed a financial crash that was completely opposite of what was happening in the United States. Naturally, with Russia now being a free country, a wave of migration towards the U.S. emerged.

This new wave of people was of a different caliber; they were young professionals with training in fields such as software, electronics, medicine and even the arts. They are “more worldly, more westernized, with higher standards of living than their predecessors.” As a result of this wave, about 20,000 Russian scientists were employed in the United States in 2003, and the credit for 30% of Microsoft products could be given to the Russian engineers in the U.S.This new refugee population was large. In the year of 1999, the Department of Homeland Security Yearbook reported 16,882 people of the Soviet Union filing refugee status applications to the U.S., 11,700 were accepted, but 16,962 entered the country.  This was the second largest population of entering refugees that year, and made up almost 20% of the refugee population. The total population increased all over the map, with an increase of about 70,000 people in Brooklyn, and one of about 40,000 people in Los Angeles between 1990 and 2000.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the population of foreign-born settlers from Russia has been continually growing, especially in major cities where opportunities exist. A significant population exists, and significant increase is occurring. Although these matters can always be subject to change, the immigration numbers have slowly begun to imitate those seen a century before.