No wonder the government wants to get into the “guest worker” permit racket. Eighth Circuit court of appeals affirms conviction of illegal immigrant smuggler who made $900,000 in just 15 months delivering illegal Mexican workers to North Dakota oriental restaurants. Bismarck Tribune. A federal appeals court has upheld the sentence of man convicted in a human smuggling case in which authorities said thousands of illegal immigrants were brought to work at Oriental restaurants at North Dakota and other states. 061273P.pdf 05/02/2007 United States v. Shan Wei Yu The district court had sentenced Shan Wei Yu, of McKinney, Texas, to nine years for illegal immigrant trafficking and money laundering. The government alleged that Yu and his company, Great Texas Employment Agency, brought at least 1,000 illegal immigrants into the United States. But “At trial, the defendant said he delivered over 6,000 aliens to different restaurants and he claimed all of them were legal," the federal prosecutor said. Defendant's girlfriend, Ya Cao, was sentenced to 21 months in prison for helping recruit illegal workers. The girlfriend claimed the defendant coerced her into assisting his scheme because she needed help seeking political asylum. The defendant disputed his higher sentence because although the guidelines allow for a harsher sentence if the defendant transported “substantially more than 100 aliens,” (USSG § 2L1.1, comment. (n.4) (2005)) he disagreed that 1000 was that. The eighth circuit agrees that 1000 is a substantially greater number. The Ninth circuit put that at only 400! United States v. Nagra, 147 F.3d 875, 886 (9th Cir. 1998) We conclude that there is ample evidence supporting the district court's conclusion that over 1,000 illegal aliens were transported and that the court did not abuse its discretion by departing upward.