In a seedy Tokyo suburb a flat crammed with 6 Chinese immigrants receives a bang on the door at dawn. Immigration police lead the men away to contemplate their return to China without the dreamed-of riches and without the £14,000 payoff for the smugglers that brought them here. Japan is coming to terms with this huge illegal immigration trade that brought it cheap labour but is stirring up its own crime wave as the Chinese smuggling gangs, known as Snakeheads, ship in huge amounts of drugs alongside their human cargo. They're deporting the people that empty their bins and build their houses. Yet still they arrive as fast as they're being caught. Japan is too tempting a jewel. "I heard many people earned money easily in Japan. That's why I came", explains one immigrant. After 6 years working secretly as a builder he's managed to build a 3-storey house back home. There is simply too much money to be made, too many dirty jobs the Japanese don't want to do, and too few immigration officers to catch them.

Produced by ABC Australia