August 29, 1999
Canada Is Leery of a Rise in
Refugees
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Seizes Chinese Boat Smuggling In 100 Immigrants (July 22)
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By JAMES BROOKE
ANCOUVER,
British Columbia -- The image of two tramp steamers disgorging 254
undocumented Chinese immigrants on beaches here this summer was enough
for a local pharmacist to unleash a tirade about Canada's "lax"
immigration law and "silly excuses" for refugee status, ending with a
harsh finale: "We are being treated like suckers!"
Around the Pacific Rim, historically European societies have long
had a visceral fear of unchecked immigration from China, the region's
population behemoth. In the Russian Far East, the police often deport
Chinese migrants. In Australia, jail terms were doubled last month for
the crime of smuggling humans into the country. This summer, the
United States and Canada have stepped up patrols in the Western
Pacific, seeking to intercept boats filled with clandestine human
cargo.
But what made the Vancouver pharmacist's outburst notable is that
the speaker, Derick Y.J. Cheng, is the owner of a Chinatown drugstore,
chairman of Vancouver's Chinese Cultural Center and a native of
Fujian, the home province of the undocumented immigrants whose arrival
this summer caused such furor.
With ethnic Chinese people accounting for 20 percent of greater
Vancouver's population and Asians accounting for half of this fall's
freshman class at the University of British Columbia, it is hard to
accuse this city of anti-Asian intolerance.
But Cheng's anger, echoed repeatedly this month in letters to
Vancouver's three Chinese daily newspapers and on talk shows on local
Chinese radio and television stations, reflects how attitudes toward
immigration are shifting sharply across Canada, a nation that probably
has the world's most liberal immigration policies.
On a per capita basis, Canada receives more immigrants than any
country in the world. As a result, about one in six Canadians is
foreign born, double the ratio in the United States. Aiming to meet a
target of 225,000 immigrants a year, Canada admits aunts, uncles,
nieces, nephews, fiances, common law spouses, and same-sex partners.
On arrival, landed immigrants immediately are entitled to the same
menu of health, welfare and university benefits as lifelong Canadian
citizens.
But this summer's smuggling boats suddenly exposed a latent fear
among Canadians that, because of their famous generosity and
courteousness, they are becoming a nation of doormats.
"Feed our people first," read protest signs held as one boatload of
undocumented Chinese were herded into a navy base near Victoria.
The local newspaper, The Times Colonist, advised the asylum
seekers: "Go home. By plane. By boat. Just Go." The newspaper said
that 97 percent of 3,362 respondents to its own poll wanted the
clandestine migrants to be deported.
"This has really gone off the charts," said Gary Lunn, a member of
Parliament from the area for the conservative Reform Party. "We have
had over 1,000 people contacting my office to sign petitions. The
phones have been jammed for weeks."
This fall, Lunn said, the Reform Party planned to introduce
legislation to tighten Canada's immigration laws. He predicted that
what he termed "the public outcry" would be so great that the
governing Liberals would have to vote to restrict immigration.
It is too pat to dismiss the angry mood as limited to the
Anglophile retirees of Victoria.
Two thousand miles to the east, in Toronto, a city that recently
won a U.N. award for its racial tolerance, The Globe and Mail, the
tribune of Canada's liberal establishment, published an editorial
condemning loopholes in the immigration law with the headline, "The
back door's open, come o-o-n in."
The arrival of the two boats, one on July 20 and the other on Aug.
11, drew into sharp focus a larger, but fuzzier illegal immigration
problem. Every year, about 5,000 people flying to Canada tear up their
documents on airplanes, and then apply for refugee status.
An increasingly popular practice is to apply for refugee status,
and then disappear during the one year review period. That abuse has
increased 20-fold during the 1990s, reaching 4,203 documented cases
last year. Among nationalities, Chinese are the worst abusers of the
system, with 53 percent of claimants vanishing after being released on
refugee status during the first half of this year. During that time,
95 percent of Chinese claimants in Montreal and 72 percent of Chinese
claimants in Vancouver disappeared. Most are presumed to have sneaked
or been smuggled across the border to the United States.
"There are 600 under review, only 200 show up, what do you think
happened to the 400?" Cheng said, citing the estimates for Chinese
refugee claimants in Vancouver last year. "They join the American
underground economy. It's not fair to the U.S."
In light of that, Vancouver immigration officials claimed victory
when only five out of 77 Chinese boat people released failed to show
up Wednesday, one week after their initial release. While one arm of
the government is seeking to deport the undocumented Chinese,
government-paid lawyers try to block them at every turn.
In an effort to get the 53 minors in the group, mostly teen-age
girls, to agree to go home voluntarily, the province's top
child-protection official wrote them letters, saying, "I have been
told that if you go to the United States, children of both genders
will be forced to work as prostitutes or forced to work in a factory
by the smugglers."
Lawyers for the children denounced the letter as an infringement on
their right to seek refugee status.
Several victories of immigration lawyers across Canada have become
notorious in the debate over who should get to stay in the country.
Critics' favorites include an American woman given refugee status in
Canada because her husband was violent and a convicted Guatemalan
pedophile allowed to return to Canada after his deportation was ruled
illegal.
But the national press repeatedly returns to undocumented Chinese
as the threat. Saturday's National Post, for example, reported a
government estimate that two thirds of student visa applications
received at the Canadian Embassy in Beijing are fraudulent.
Here in Canada's Pacific province, which has the nation's
second-highest tax rate and 8.6 percent unemployment, economic factors
fuel local anger. Newspapers dwell on the fact that the two-year cost
of housing, feeding, and eventually deporting the Chinese could easily
reach $3.5 million.
While the general discontent has acquired some racial overtones,
even Victor Y. Wong, a Chinese-Canadian activist here, admits that, in
modern Vancouver, the debate swirls more around class than on race.
"These are working-class peasant farmers," Wong, said of the
impoverished immigrants. "We have well-heeled Hong Kong Chinese,
Canadian-Chinese and Taiwanese Chinese looking down their noses at
them. They feel these people water down the community."
Mason Loh, a regular spokesman for Vancouver's 300,000-member
ethnic Chinese community on English- and Chinese-language talk shows
here, agreed.
"There is a feeling we are kicking out the business people and
taking in the boat people," the Taiwan-born lawyer said. He said that
the number of ethnic Chinese businessmen moving to Canada had dropped
in recent years, partly because Canada has raised the minimum amount
of investment money needed to get a visa. "The immigration system is
not smart enough," he said. "We are pushing out the good quality
people who can help Canada -- and we are taking in the freeloaders."
