Dozens of rallies to protest the tightening of immigration laws are scheduled across the nation today. There is something unexpected about finding the old date of May Day, once set aside for commemorating labor’s rights, turning into an occasion to push for immigrant rights. No matter what the outcome today, and there may be some clashes, the story here is the nationwide support for newer arrivals. Who are immigrants and where does the sympathy for immigrants come from?

A documentary that just premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival offers some clues. It is “Golden Venture,” the story of a tramp steamer bearing 286 Chinese that intentionally ran itself aground at Breezy Point, Long Island,13 years ago in June. Ten people died within sight of the Statue of Liberty. The film is airing this week three times – May 3, May 4, and May 6.

The first thing that comes through about the arrivals that late spring night is their desperation. A number were fleeing the communist Chinese regime’s one-child policy; authorities routinely wrecked homes and destroyed lives upon learning that families were expecting a second child. Paying smugglers known as snakeheads some $30,000 for their chance, the immigrants walked over the mountains of Burma to Thailand, where, in Bangkok, they spent several months in a staging spot called the “Duck House.”

The crossing was rough and included a trip through a hurricane near the Horn of Africa (“they weren’t waves, they were mountains,” one traveler said). There were beatings and rapes by overseers. They braved all this for the chance to swim in cold water toward the American shore. Mayor Dinkins was moved. “I would make this observation to the residents of our city,” he was filmed as saying on the beach among the refugees. “These are people apparently desperately trying to come to America. I would hope all the rest of the people realize how important that freedom is. “

The film reminds us that those travelers who did make it ashore found the reception equally chilly. But the year before Ross Perot had won 19% of the vote campaigning against free trade, and unemployment countrywide was 7.5%.The first bombing of the World Trade Center early in 1993 built the suspicion that foreigners were to blame for American troubles. The new Clinton administration, panicked that the Golden Venture would inspire a thousand other such voyages, determined to make a deterrent example of the arrivals.

The next day the administration bused them to a medium-security prison in York, Pennsylvania, notwithstanding their request for asylum. Senator Schumer, then a member of the House, was unmoved, reminding the public that “the law has always been that such people can be detained.” At York, the arrivals languished for four years, while Patrick Buchanan and other populists spoke about America’s “greatest invasion,” that of immigrants. President Clinton warned that “we can’t afford to lose control of our own borders.”

One thing about the Chinese that comes clear in the film is their perseverance. One man who was among the more than 100 who opted for deportation was, upon his return to China, beaten and forcibly sterilized, only to turn around and make it back yet another way to the America. With the aid of a group of York attorneys, the remaining prisoners finally, in 1997, won the attention of Mr. Clinton, who pardoned them without giving them legal status in America. Most then instantly penetrated the porous economy, finding jobs in the food industry.

Thus the strivers of the Golden Venture helped along the economy’s faster growth in the late 1990s. The story here, says Peter Cohn, the man who produced, wrote and directed “Golden Venture,” is the classic immigrant’s tale – that of “going through hell to own a Chinese restaurant.” Several Golden Venture passengers have already achieved that goal. Such successes are among the factors in what we would argue, even with the outbreak of a global war of terror, has been an improvement of the attitude toward immigration in the years since the Golden Venture. An economic philosophy is ascendant in which Americans understand that newcomers are more an asset than a threat.

Today lawyers representing some of the Golden Venture Chinese have a direct appeal into President Bush for full legal status. It would be a fitting thing for him to grant it. In 2000 tugboats towed the old Golden Venture to the coast off Boca Raton, Fla., where it was deliberately sunk to be used as an artificial reef. For several years, until the hurricanes of 2005 tore the freighter apart, American tourists and fish swam about the windows through which the desperate once had stared. Thus did even the remains of the old vessel enrich the rest of our lives.