Calls efforts to curb migrant smuggling `outstanding'

HONG KONG - A day before jetting home to Canada, Immigration Minister Elinor Caplan learned yesterday how illegal migrants undertake a far more dangerous voyage by sea in specially rigged containers.

Caplan toured Hong Kong's sprawling container terminal to see how smugglers hide their human cargo inside containers with special hatches that allow them to survive their journey across the Pacific Ocean and escape detection.

But the inspection tour here yesterday also served as a grim reminder that for some of the stowaways, the odyssey to North America can be a dead end.

Three of 18 people, who were smuggled in canvas-topped containers aboard the Japanese-owned ship Cape May, were found dead in January when the boat docked in Seattle. Several others migrants were so severely dehydrated they had to be hospitalized.

From last December until now, more than 180 illegal Chinese migrants were captured along the coasts of Canada and the U.S. after hiding in 11 vessels that set off from Hong Kong.

But Caplan came away impressed after seeing the massive dragnet by local security forces aimed at so-called snakeheads who smuggle clients from mainland China via this port city.

Officials briefed Caplan on high-tech x-ray machines and carbon dioxide detectors that could reveal smuggled humans inside sealed containers. And she watched a Springer spaniel sniff cargo heading for Vancouver.

``I was overwhelmed when I saw the number of containers here, it's immense,'' the immigration minister told local journalists at the terminal. ``The efforts they're making are outstanding.''

While lavishing praise on Hong Kong authorities for their aggressive efforts, Caplan expressed frustration with mainland China for failing to co-operate as closely with Canada.

Canada has complained Beijing is taking too long to repatriate some 100 illegal migrants who arrived by the boatload off British Columbia's coast last summer.

China wants Canada to return the illegals by the boatload, rather than granting them access to Canada's refugee determination process on a case-by-case basis in which many claim human rights abuses.

Despite a week-long trip to the mainland before coming to Hong Kong, Caplan did not win any concrete assurances from China to speed up the required documentation process that would allow the migrants to be repatriated.

``We need help from the government of China to return those young people as soon as possible,'' she told reporters here yesterday. ``There have been lots of expressions of goodwill, but now we need to see action.''

Beijing insists on documenting the citizenship of each returnee in a time-consuming way, ``much of which, in my view, is bureaucratic,'' she said sharply, adding the paperwork should take ``weeks, days - not months or years.''

Illegal immigration is a hot-button issue in Hong Kong, which has historically attracted refugees from the Communist mainland.

But in recent decades, local authorities have made enforcement a top priority out of fear the territory of 7 million people would be overwhelmed if more unauthorized mainlanders slipped in.

With Hong Kong the last stop on her week-long trip through China, Caplan and members of her delegation seemed discouraged by mainland indifference to their campaign.

Despite their intense efforts to raise awareness, they received little coverage in the Chinese press, and little more than pro-forma reassurances from government officials.

Official warnings about the perils are old news for a seafaring people who see the trip as a calculated gamble with a big payoff.

And Canada is usually little more than a way station for Fujianese migrants who are willing to risk everything to reach their ultimate destination, New York's Chinatown.

Ying Chan, an academic at the University of Hong Kong who has researched emigration from Fujian, said some of the local officials who tell Caplan they are making every effort to smash the snakehead rings may also be privately taking bribes to look the other way.

You cannot load a boat with 200 people at night without the authorities knowing what's going on, Chan said.

``Of course they're involved,'' Chan said.

``This is such a lucrative business. Moving people is better than moving drugs, because the goods move themselves, and they cover up; and the penalties are light.''