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Saturday, August 28, 1999

Stewart Bell
National Post

The United States Coast Guard has intercepted what appears to be another shipload of Chinese boat people. The 75 suspected illegal migrants were found aboard a broken-down cargo vessel adrift in the mid-Pacific.

The ship was being towed yesterday to Midway Island.

While authorities have so far been unable to communicate with the passengers due to the language barrier, U.S. officials are assuming the ship is yet another smuggling boat ferrying Chinese migrants to Canada or the United States.

"I would assume that, but I don't have any confirmation," said Nicole Chulick, spokeswoman for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. "As soon as we can interview them then we'll have a better idea."

U.S. immigration officials were planning to take custody of the passengers once they arrived at Midway, at the western rim of the Hawaiian Islands chain, where they will be housed and interviewed.

It was unclear whether the ship was destined for Canada or the U.S., but both coastlines are about the same distance from the archipelago where the 50-metre ship was first spotted this week.

The ship came to the attention of the coast guard on Wednesday when rescuers picked up a radio distress call. A search plane found it 560 kilometres off Midway. The ship had been adrift for a month and was low on food and water. Several passengers needed medical attention.

"Our primary concern is for the safety of those on board so we took the vessel in tow to Midway because that's the closest port to where they were," said Eric Hedaa, public information officer with the 14th Coast Guard District in Honolulu.

Four shiploads of migrants from China's Fujian province have landed in Canada and the U.S. so far this summer. The first arrived on the B.C. coast July 20, followed by a second vessel on Aug. 11.

The following day, 132 Chinese migrants were found in the hold of a ship docked in Savannah, Ga. They were in a secret compartment that had been covered with a sheet of steel and a door that was welded in place.

Another ship carrying 100 undocumented Chinese migrants was later intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard near the Mariana Islands, a U.S. protectorate south of Japan. The passengers said their destination was Vancouver.

Immigration officials suspect Chinese migrants have been using Canada as a gateway to the U.S., where they are put to work as sweatshop labourers or prostitutes to pay off their debts to the smugglers, organized crime figures known as snakeheads.

The British Columbia government, which has custody of the 75 under-age migrants who arrived on the West Coast this summer aboard the two ships, has advised the youths to return to China.

The boat arrivals have ignited a debate over Canada's immigration policies, but federal officials say those coming by sea are only a small fraction of the thousands of migrants who arrive here each year and claim to be refugees.