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CLIP:CBC Morning: Jeannie Lee spoke with Immigration Minister Elinor Caplan

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CLIP: Tim Weekes has more on the migrants.

VANCOUVER - The fate of 50 children, sent alone from China to find work in Canada, remains up in the air.

• RELATED: Fewer boat people face deportation

The presence of so many children on the two smuggling ships, which arrived recently off B.C.'s coast from China's Fujian province, is a puzzlement to Canadian authorities.

'Most of the children said they were put on the boat by family or relatives and told to come to Canada, to The Golden Mountain, to find work.' - Jim Redmond, Immigration Canada

The children have told Immigration workers they were put on a boat and told to find work on The Golden Mountain -- the term used by the illegal migrants to describe Canada.

The children, as young as eight and most traveling unaccompanied, are being detained with the other boat people in a converted gymnasium at CFB Esquimalt.

They've undergone one immigration interview. Next, they come under the guardianship of the B.C.'s Ministry of Children and Families. It may be a few days before everything's worked out so they can leave the base.

"It's a very strange situation," said Children and Families Minister Lois Boone.

"Some of my staff have been talking to other countries that have similar problems with boat people, and they have not found that they have had a lot of unattended kids."

The situation is as expensive as it is strange, says Boone.

Each child will cost $8,200 a month to keep in care, which continues until the child's fate is determined.

Boone can't understand why so many parents risked sending their children across the ocean on ships that were barely seaworthy.

The first boat, which landed July 20, had 17 unaccompanied boys age 14 to 18. As many as 40 unaccompanied kids were in the second boatload.

$1 million & counting

The bill to Canadian taxpayers to house and process the 254 migrants who want to find work in Canada is already approaching $1 million, Immigration Canada says.

That bill doesn't include costs to the RCMP, the military, Fisheries Canada and other government departments.

And the B.C. government, responsible for welfare payments to the refugees, has asked for help from Ottawa.