Friday, August 13,
1999 Migrants begin fight to stay in
Canada Hundreds watch arrival: Children
as young as four taken to B.C. Forces base
Robert Remington in Port Hardy Chris Wattie in
Toronto and Stewart Bell in Vancouver National Post, with files from Reuters, The Canadian
Press
Nick Didlick, the Vancouver
Sun Migrants peer out from the
fantail of the Canadian Coast Guard ship Tanu as it enters
Port Hardy, B.C.,
yesterday.
| A group of
Chinese migrants arrived on Vancouver Island yesterday after a
10-hour sea voyage from the barren, isolated beach where they swam
ashore after being forced into the ocean by the crew of the
unregistered vessel that carried them across the Pacific.
Hundreds of residents in Port Hardy lined police barricades to
catch a glimpse of the men, women and children as young as four as
they were hustled off the Coast Guard vessels Tanu and Arrow Post,
which had ferried them from the isolated island in the Queen
Charlotte chain where they were found huddled on a rocky beach on
Wednesday morning.
Once they had disembarked from the Coast Guard vessels, officials
from the Citizenship and Immigration Department herded the group on
to school buses for the trip to Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt, near
Victoria.
"Right now our priority has been to organize such a large group
of people in a fairly remote area and get them to the place where
they will be housed and sheltered," said Lois Reimer, a spokeswoman
for the department.
The smugglers' boat, a former fishing vessel believed to be from
South Korea, was seized by Canada several hours after it dropped off
the immigrants and made a dash for international waters, officials
said.
Authorities do not know the boat's exact origin or intended
destination on the Canadian coast.
Resident Jerry Higginson, a logger, stood on a shoreline rock and
played a shaky version of O Canada on his trumpet as the migrants
were led on to the buses. As they filed off the Coast Guard vessel
wrapped in red blankets, some waved and smiled. Others looked glum.
"These people aren't criminals," Mr. Higginson said after the
migrants drove off. "We've got the greatest country in the world:
You can't blame them for wanting to be here."
The immigrants spent several hours in the Coast Guard ships
docked at Port Hardy as RCMP searched them and immigration officials
interviewed them.
Some of the men were in plastic handcuffs.
One man had to be airlifted to Queen Charlotte City for treatment
for severe hypothermia where he was listed in stable condition.
Searchers found another four immigrants wandering the dense woods
of the island hours after their compatriots were rescued from the
windswept beach.
Micheline Brodeur, a spokesman for the Coast Guard, said the four
were picked up early yesterday and appeared to be looking for a
highway. RCMP officers said they were confident that all of the
illegal immigrants were now accounted for.
The crew of the vessel that brought the group from China and then
dumped them off in the ocean, forcing them to swim to shore in icy
waters, had apparently assured them there was a road. But the island
is among the most remote of the isolated Queen Charlotte chain and
has only a handful of rough paths.
RCMP Constable Tracey Rook said the eight crew members of the
migrants' ship, who were arrested after they tried to elude Canadian
authorities by speeding their vessel back to international waters,
were taken to the RCMP detachment at Port Hardy.
Const. Rook said the crew members have been charged under the
Immigration Act with aiding and abetting a party of 10 or more
people to illegally enter the country. They were also charged with
causing a person to disembark at sea.
Guilty parties face fines of $500,000 or 10 years in jail.
"They will be held in the cells at Port Hardy for the time
being," she said.
The group is believed to be from Fujian, a province on the
southeast coast of China, which is the same point of origin as a
boatload of 123 migrants who washed ashore on Vancouver Island last
month.
The two groups of migrants have prompted heated debate about
Canada's immigration and refugee laws.
All the members of the first group have claimed refugee status.
Most are living in Vancouver and Victoria and are awaiting refugee
hearings.
Thirty-seven have been jailed, mainly those suspected of
belonging to the smuggling ring that brought them to Canada.
Among the local residents awaiting the arrival of the latest
immigrants were four native women wearing placards stating: Feed our
People First and Save Canadians First.
"It is hard to say what their circumstances are. If they're being
persecuted, we've got land and resources," said Ruth McDonough.
Canadian and U.S. authorities have been on the alert in recent
months for boat people from Asia, following accounts of several
landings in Australia - which has since toughened its immigration
laws.
Authorities believe most of the smuggling is being run by Asian
crime gangs, who sometimes charge the immigrants more than $40,000
to make the weeks-long journey crammed into the holds of dilapidated
vessels.
Yesterday, officials contradicted one another over how much prior
knowledge they had about the second boat.
Military officials said they were acting on a specific tip-off
but Immigration officials said they received no advance warning that
the second vessel would be arriving.
RELATED SITES:
(Each link opens a new window)
Citizenship and Immigration Canada
The brand-new white paper on immigration policy
Statistics Canada: Immigration and
Citizenship
Statistics from the 1996 national census that look at where
Canadians came from.
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