SHENZHEN border police caught 26 illegal immigrants from Vietnam who were living in a small rented apartment in Baishizhou, Nanshan District, on Friday, the Daily Sunshine reported yesterday.

    The Vietnamese were allegedly lured by promises of high salaries and guaranteed employment by intermediaries back in their home country.

    The illegal immigrants, 16 men and 10 women, shared a 30-square-meter apartment in Baishizhou. Half of them were born in the 1990s and the youngest immigrant caught Friday was only 14 years old, the Daily said.

    A preliminary investigation by the border police found that most of the illegal immigrants were relatives.

    They allegedly paid Vietnamese intermediaries up to 10,000 yuan (US$1,575) to get employment in factories in Shenzhen, Hong Kong and other Pearl River Delta cities in Guangdong Province.

    They were promised salaries 10 times higher than in Vietnam, according to the media report.

    The police said the immigrants had climbed over mountains and traveled by water to illegally enter Guangxi, which borders Vietnam. They were then transported to Guangdong Province by snakeheads working with Vietnamese intermediaries to fulfill their “gold dream.”

    It was not clear if they had jobs in Shenzhen or how much they actually earned.

    The border police raided the rented apartment following a one-month investigation beginning in August and sparked by “a clue,” according to the Chinese-language report. Further investigation is under way.

    The smuggling of illegal workers from Vietnam across the 1,400-kilometer border into China is growing, according to a Reuters report in August. Labor brokers estimate that tens of thousands work at factories in the Pearl River Delta, which is filled with factories making goods for export. Workers from other Southeast Asian nations are joining them.

    Vietnam, a nation of 92.5 million people, sent 107,000 workers abroad legally in 2014 – a 20-percent increase from the year before, according to the report.

    There was no official data on illegal foreign workers in China, but one Chinese labor broker estimated “at least 30,000” illegal workers were employed just in Dongguan, the report said.

    An April report in the official China Daily newspaper said Guangdong authorities had investigated at least 5,000 cases last year of illegal foreign workers.(Han Ximin)