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.
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