• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, December 7, 2007

Media Life posted the result of an annual survey that notes an increase--to 43%--in the number of media buyers and planners who are unhappy with their pay. They agreed with the statement: "I am less than satisfied. Our agency is generous with more senior managers but is tight-fisted when it comes to salaries and benefits of junior staffers." Some 38% agreed with the statement: "I am satisfied with my salary but worry that it may be less than market value when compared with others of my experience level."

On the same day, as luck would have it, Media Life reported that GroupM says that the media business in emerging nations such as China is in a major boom. China will account for 21% of new spending, and Russia and Brazil will jump 6% each, while India will claim 3%. The forecast calls for U.S. ad spending to grow a measly 3.7% next year.

As a result, reversing a trend that since the late 1980s has seen hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from China's Fujian province smuggled into the United States, media buyers are now sneaking into China seeking a piece of the booming media business.

The business of human smuggling has evolved as security has tightened in the U.S. and the smugglers, known as "mediasupes" by Chinese, have become more sophisticated.

When the smuggling began two decades ago, the cost of coming to the U.S. was around $15,000. Now, planners pay $60,000 to $80,000 to be taken to China.

On one corner of Lower Broadway in New York people gather in the communal area. Old men play "Bejeweled" on their handhelds in the corner; others drink Cosmos and talk. There are lots of young women but no children.

Locals say smuggling is an open business here. One of them says everyone knows how to find a mediasupe--but that you need to have the money to go.

People who can go are aided by family, friends and former neighbors who have already prospered in the Chinese Internet or broadcast industries. Sometimes people living abroad lend money to pay for the mediasupes.

For the most part, human smuggling is no longer about packing hundreds of people into dangerous ships. Nowadays, smuggling involves airports and cars and crisscrossing the globe on scheduled flights. Mediasupes use methods that mimic legal means of entry.

Getting a Fake ID

Smuggling people through legal points of entry--instead of skirting them--requires fake documents. And Greenwich Village is one place to get phony papers.

In America's capital of media and advertising, there is a street known as Broadway. At night it lights up with bright signs advertising tattoo and massage parlors. The air smells of humidity, greasepaint, grilled meat, people and booze.

You can buy fake IDs, driver's licenses, press cards and even fake degrees. The people who sell these documents set up shop among racks of knock-off Rolexes and fake Pradas. They sit on cheap plastic lawn chairs behind card tables.

You won't find fake passports on these tables, but they're available if you have the connections and the cash. At the end of Broadway, a restaurant owner and part-time stolen passport dealer says the documents are in demand. The man didn't want his name used.

The restaurant owner started dealing passports about 10 years ago. He is a middleman, buying passports and selling them to the next middleman. He doesn't know who ends up using the passports.

"It's not that every passport has the same price. For example, the U.S. passport is almost worthless because everything is very strict. It's the same with the U.K. passport," he says. "You cannot fake it. There is high demand for passports from Israel and Japan."

"People will use the same passport. They peel back the cover and switch the picture," the dealer says. "They change the name, the signature--like how they do it with fake student IDs."

Newer passports that use photos from digital cameras are made in New Jersey, he says.

Traveling Along the Smuggling Route

For the media buyers who are smuggled through Broadway, the journey starts out legally. Many of them fly into JFK as "tourists"--but these tourists never go home.

In New York they get fake documents and then move on to the next stop along the smuggling route.

Once they're on the road, the media crowd travels a meandering route--through Canada, Latin America, Africa, Europe and Southeast Asia--before finally reaching China.

Good smugglers--the expensive ones--run a full-service operation. They escort the buyers each step of the way, providing food, lodging and transportation.

"I had one buyer complain about the gluten content of our lunches," says one smuggler. "Another wanted a no-smoking tent, and another said he never traveled 'in the back of the bus'. Who ARE these people?"

Working through local operators with local nicknames, mediasupes in New York work with the "coyotes" in Latin America who hand off their charges to "pig daddies" in Thailand.

Reaching China

After the media buyers cross into North Vietnam, they travel north and are smuggled across the border into China. Every week, 50 to 100 media buyers are caught trying to cross the Chinese border.

Those who make it to China are taken to a safe house and handed cell phones. They call home to say they've arrived safely. Then they fan out across the country, boarding buses that take them to every corner of China.

They go to jobs offered by U.S. media immigrants who've already made it. They seek prosperity--the same prosperity that others who have traveled a similar path before them have found.

(Thank you to NPR, which made this story possible.)

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