Canada country of choice for illegal immigrants

TORONTO (CP) - Canadian police officials are beginning to see more illegal Chinese immigrants choosing Canada over the United States. "A significant amount, maybe as much as half of those who begin to work their way across to New York, are staying in Canada," Jim Fisher of the RCMP's Criminal Intelligence Service Canada said Wednesday.

Fisher, the national co-ordinator for Asian organized crime intelligence, noted that Toronto's Fujianese Chinese community has grown from "practically nothing to about 8,000 in the past five to seven years."

Fujian province in southeast China is a major source of illegal migrants.

"This is a pretty good indication of the new trend," he said.

Although New York remains the most popular location for many of these illegal immigrants, they are increasingly fearful of the violence of the snakeheads - the smugglers - toward those failing to pay up the smuggling fees.

If they don't pay the smugglers they risk being kidnapped or detained by them to work in their network of sweatshops, Fisher said.

It is easier for immigrants to get into Canada, he added.

More than 120 illegal Chinese immigrants were intercepted off the B.C. coast earlier this week on a stinking, filthy ship.

The 122 migrants will spend the next week sleeping on folding camp cots erected in a naval base gymnasium near Victoria.

The RCMP agency was tipped off 18 months ago that a new flood of illegals would be arriving on the West Coast, but Fisher said there are simply too many routes at the smugglers' disposal.

"It's like finding a needle in a haystack. It's simply impossible to patrol the coast 100 per cent," Fisher said.

Canadian Immigration officials say the number of illegal entries from China began to increase sharply about two years ago, around the time of the Asian economic crisis. They speculate that the collapse caused many hard-hit Chinese to seek a better life outside Asia, even if it means the often-brutal voyages to their new home.

Fisher said the average waiting time to leave China for illegal immigrants is a month for a boat, six weeks by land and two months by air. It costs up to $47,000 US to be smuggled to North America.

(Toronto Star, Globe and Mail)