To systematically and legally regulate the growing number of rural-urban internal migrants, the Beijing municipality of the People's Republic of China, promulgated a series of discriminatory laws and regulations against them centered around individual business operator license applications. Based on fieldwork evidence, this article demonstrates that migrants, a heavily disadvantaged and marginalized social group, have forgone legality and devised creative coping strategies in dealing with the discriminatory legislation. These strategies include direct evasion of the law, collusion with local business entities to avoid the law, and downright corruption. In analyzing the context of these unintended consequences, this article argues that the discriminatory law itself constitutes their vital source. It suggests that the so-called advancement of the rule of law in China actually is accompanied and plagued by the evasion of law, collusion, and corruption, a process full of unintended, paradoxical, and perverse consequences.