No refuge.

• Author: Mosher, Steven W.

In 1988 I helped a pregnant Chinese woman, Chi An, win political asylum in the United States on the then-novel grounds that she was fleeing a forced abortion. The Immigration and Naturalization Service bitterly opposed her application from the beginning. Those who resisted China's one-child policy, INS attorneys argued, were merely social malcontents, not true political dissidents. Besides, they said, granting asylum to Chi An would "open up the floodgates" to a torrent of illegal Chinese immigrants.

I regarded the INS position as naive and troubling. In China dissent from any government policy--be it the prohibition on underground publications or the ban on second children--is an act of political rebellion. As far as "opening up the floodgates" was concerned, how could Chinese in any numbers escape from that closed society, much less cross the vast Pacific to our shores? To me, the INS arguments sounded like an attempt to exploit old, irrational fears of a "yellow peril."

Chi An's victory on August 5, 1988, established a precedent: Those Chinese arriving on our shores who could demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution in connection with the one-child policy would henceforth be granted asylum. Still, contrary to the dire prophecies of the INS, only a few dozen Chinese filed claims for sanctuary on that basis during the next few years. Many, though not all, were granted permission to remain.

Then, on June 6 of this year, an old freighter named the Golden Venture went aground in New York Harbor. All 256 survivors claimed asylum, most on the grounds that they were fleeing the one-child policy. The following is the story of one such claimant, Chang Zhen, which I recount not because it is extraordinary but because it is typical. (I use pseudonyms for both Chang and his lawyer so as not to prejudice their case.)

Like many of the passengers aboard the Golden Venture, Chang Zhen was a native of Fuchoa city, located in Fujian province on the rugged southwest coast of China. Shortly after the birth of his first son in March 1991, he was visited by the director of birth planning for the city ward in which he lived. It was not a social call. There would be no second child, the director told Chang. Now that he and his wife had the one child permitted by law, she would have to submit to a tubal ligation, and the sooner the better.

Secretly hoping eventually to have other children, Chang cut a deal with the director. In return for an 8,000-renminbi...