Caplan's talk about snakeheads ignored in China

CHANGLE, China - Here in Fujian Province, where wanderlust is a family tradition, telling people to stay home is a hard sell.

Immigration Minister Elinor Caplan came face to face with that reality yesterday when she met local journalists for a beachfront photo op to drive home the message that human smuggling is a dead end.

Only two Chinese journalists turned up to hear her warnings of Canada's crackdown on illegal immigration. And one seemed more interested in making his way to Canada than publicizing her warning about the futility - and peril - of illegal sea voyages to British Columbia.

Why, the reporter wanted to know, had his own visa application been turned down by an immigration officer when he applied to visit Canada in 1997? Didn't Canada need more journalists?

For Caplan, the encounter underscored the obstacles facing her ``awareness campaign'' in a region where so many people are preoccupied with getting out. A similar scene played out the week before, when Canadian immigration officials invited members of the Chinese media to the Beijing embassy for an advance briefing on Caplan's visit.

Caplan pleaded with Fujianese not to be duped by snakeheads who extort huge sums to smuggle people to North America.

``I hope you'll help me get that message out,'' a frustrated Caplan implored one local reporter. ``We need to warn your young people of the dangers.''

After a week of meeting Chinese officials and courting the local press, Caplan acknowledged yesterday that making herself heard is the hard part.

``To be honest, there hasn't been as much attention as we had hoped there would be,'' she said later to Canadian reporters covering her delegation.

In this bustling town near the main airport in Fuzhou, capital of Fujian province, Caplan repeated to officials Canada's plea to repatriate what she said were 100 would-be migrants who have exhausted claims for refugee status, out of some 600 Chinese who arrived by boat off B.C. last year.

Ottawa is asking China to provide the documentation needed to send them home. Canadian officials believe Beijing is dragging its feet to press Canada into sending migrants back by the boatload - rather than case by case as is required by Canada's refugee laws.

Sophia Leung, a Liberal backbencher from British Columbia who is travelling with Caplan's delegation and the first woman of Chinese-Canadian descent elected to Parliament, made an impassioned plea in Mandarin for officials in Changle to stanch the flow of illegals.

She described how fallout from negative coverage of the boat people saga has hurt the interests of her fellow Chinese-Canadians.

``I gave them a pretty strong nudge,'' Leung said in an interview later.

``We Chinese-Canadians are well-known to be honest and hard-working, not criminals. I think you are aware this will have a very, very negative impact on Chinese-Canadians' reputation,'' Leung said she told the Fujianese officials.

``This will be bad for China.''

Speaking later in Mandarin for a local Chinese television crew, Leung again appealed to Fujianese not to fall for the sales pitches of unscrupulous snakeheads.

``Don't send your daughters,'' she told the TV camera. ``If you love your children, don't let them do it.''

But Changle's first vice-mayor Li Jun Xiang repeated the official Chinese line that illegal migrants falsely will claim to be persecuted members of the banned Falun Dafa cult, or to be suffering retribution for violating China's one-child policy and it's better to sent them back ``by the boatload.''

Asked why it takes China so long to repatriate its own citizens, he asserted authorities here cannot always be sure that Fujianese migrants - who speak a unique local dialect - are really from the area. ``It's sometimes hard to recognize them because Asian people look the same,'' he said.

Another reason Caplan's campaign may be falling on deaf ears is that for most Fujianese Canada's merely a way station or unintended port of call en route to New York's Chinatown.