Each year, up to 12,000 people from China are smuggled into the United States without the proper documentation, according to a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Each migrant is believed to have paid up to $50,000 to a human smuggler in order to be smuggled into the United States, creating a $600 Million human smuggling industry in China.
Source: “Transnational Organized Crime in East Asia and the Pacific: A Threat Assessment,” UNODC, April 2013, Executive Summary, page v.