National Post Online - news
National Post
 News Financial Post Arts & Life Sports Commentary Diversions Forums


[Festivals]

 Canada
 + News
 + Reporter
 + Politics
 + West to East

 World
 + News
 + Postcard
 + Observer


Careerclick

Special Features







Search Help
Sort by:
Date
Rank
 
Category


Monday, August 16, 1999

Illegals used as cheap labour
Thousands of migrants en route to New York settle in Toronto's Chinatown

Adrienne Tanner
National Post

Nick Didlick, The Vancouver Sun
Some of the 131 Chinese migrants illegally dropped in Gilbert Bay in the Southern Queen Charlotte Islands by a boat entering Canadian waters last week walk handcuffed to a waiting bus to take them to be processed by Immigration Department officials in Esquimalt.

Nick Didlick, The Vancouver Sun
An arrested Korean crew member laughs at a trumpeter playing Oh Canada last week as he's taken off to jail charged under the Immigration act for human smuggling.

TORONTO - While many fortune-seekers from China's Fujian province use Canada as a pipeline to New York, thousands have settled in Toronto, where they live and work in the bustle of downtown Chinatown.

Toronto's Fukinese community numbers between 4,000 and 8,000, Peter Yeun, a detective with the Toronto Police Service's Asian Crime Unit, says.

Few are criminals by trade, but most do enter Canada illegally, paying smugglers for perilous boat journeys or fraudulent documents that allow them to come by plane.

"If 50% of them tell us their real names, we're ahead of the game. We don't know who they are, there's no database or fingerprints or anything like that," Det. Yeun says.

New arrivals find jobs in grocery stores and restaurants in working-class areas near Spadina Avenue and Gerrard Street East, where they work for low wages to send money to their families in China.

"They take jobs that you and I would not take," Joanne Lau, a Metro Toronto South East Asian Legal Clinic lawyer, says.

Many recent arrivals are refugee claimants and are permitted to work until their hearing. Some have no legal status in Canada at all. Police seldom bother to check.

"Even if we go there and arrest them for working without permits, the bottom line is they're going to come back out again and claim refugee status," Det. Yeun says.

Patrolling Chinatown, Det. Yeun has come to know the Fukinese migrants and the thriving smuggling racket pedaling the North American dream.

"They have to pay $38,000 to $48,000 to get smuggled into Canada." Usually half is paid up front in China, the other half upon arrival. The smugglers, or snakeheads, are supplied with the contact numbers before they leave China and call demanding payment once their human cargo is delivered, Det. Yeun says.

All new arrivals, even those who sneak into Canada undetected, are advised to make refugee claims that entitle them to medical care and social assistance.

Most of the time, smugglers are promptly paid and the migrants are set free to eke out a living in Canada or try their luck in the United States. "They are hard- working citizens who hold down jobs," Det. Yeun says.

But in 10% to 15% of the cases, the Canadian contact fails to show up with the money, leaving the migrant under the control of a highly-organized gang of snakehead debt collectors.

Women are sent to work in sleazy massage parlours in Toronto or New York. The men live 10 to a room in flophouses and work in the supermarkets, where they earn between $200 and $300 per month, Det. Yeun says.

Snakeheads siphon the bulk of their wages, leaving the indentured labourers with less than $10 a day spending money.

"They get up at 6 a.m. to go to work, and at 6 p.m., they're all lined up in the back alleys squatting with a bowl of rice. Those are your Fukinese illegals who weren't able to come up with the money to pay these snakeheads." Fear keeps them silent and police get few complaints.

A rare glimpse into the closed, violent world will be offered in September, when court proceedings begin against five snakeheads charged with extortion, assault, uttering death threats and attempting to obstruct justice. Warrants have been issued for two more gang members who escaped after the February, 1998, incident.

The case revolves around a family man who didn't pay their smuggling debt and was caught by angry gang members while eating lunch in a downtown restaurant. As the family was beaten in front of terrified passersby on the corner of Spadina and Dundas, one gang member sent a thug to threaten their ageing father in Fujian.

Det. Yeun wishes more victims would come forward, but fear of reprisals, both in Canada and back in China, make it unlikely.

The flow of refugee claimants from China isn't new, Ms. Lau says. "Recently it has gotten a lot of publicity because the methods are getting so outrageous."

Two boatloads of migrants from China's Fujian province have landed in Canada this summer and up to two more boats are rumoured to be on the way. Most refugee claimants have arrived by plane.

Canada suspended deportations of Chinese refugee claimants after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and allowed many to stay permanently under a special immigration program, which has ended. Today failed refugee claimants from China are deported once they have exhausted all their avenues of appeal.




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.

  •  
     Home Site Map Feedback Info

    Copyright © Southam Inc. All rights reserved.
    Optimized for browser versions 3.0 and higher.