Immigrants' rights must be preserved, says lawyer

A group of Asians crowd the bow of a ship in the waters near Tahsis, B.C., on the west coast of Vancouver Island. (Vancouver Province-Arlen Redekop)

DENE MOORE

ESQUIMALT, B.C. (CP) - An immigration lawyer worries the rights of 122 illegal Chinese immigrants who arrived clandestinely on a stinking, filthy ship could get lost in the long process ahead of them.

Peter Stockholder says the Canadian Bar Association wants to ensure that after spending 39 days at sea in deplorable living conditions, the Chinese know what their rights are in Canada.

"There are concerns," he said.

"They would be completely in the dark and its important to get some kind of help for them."

The would-be Chinese immigrants, who authorities believe were being smuggled into the country, are being detained at a naval base.

After a security and health inspection at sea, the ship was towed in to a wharf near Gold River early Wednesday, where the passengers were loaded onto buses and taken to Esquimalt, a bedroom community of Victoria.

Many smiled and waved from the buses as they arrived Wednesday.

They spent much of the day aboard the vehicles as immigration, defence, health and police officials prepared a base gymnasium that will be their temporary home.

Jim Redmond, an official with Citizenship and Immigration, said none of the migrants arrived with any identification, although some had sketchy cards that didn't reveal much.

Redmond said one person told a Mandarin interpreter he had paid $38,000 US for the voyage.

"They were relieved to get on the bus on dry land," said Redmond, describing many of them as having "sea legs.'

The people were crammed into a hold that was unlivable, he said.

"The vessel was abysmal," Redmond said. "There was human waste throughout the hold area where the migrants were being forced to live."'

The passengers - 104 men and 18 women - appear to have come from Fuzhou in southern China, said Lt. Cmdr. Chris Henderson.

The migrants will spend the next week sleeping on 125 folding camp cots erected in the gymnasium.

Military police will stand guard over the compound while the migrants spent the next several days being interviewed by immigration officials.

Redmond said officials must do security checks for criminal records and make a decision on whether the migrants are likely to appear for future immigration hearings.

If they're determined not to be a danger they could be released into the community.

"What we will be doing over the next couple of days is interviewing," Redmond said.

"We'll be finger-printing, we'll be working with our colleagues in the (RCMP) and we'll be working with our offices and operations overseas . . . in China and Hong Kong and Taiwan."

Stockholder said it's important to process the refugees as quickly as possible, so they can move into the community.

"They can be given community support rather than spend time in a detention facility, which is not a pleasant place to be," he said.

Stockholder said the immigrants have rights under Canadian law, but "there's the possibility of losing that right within the immigration system," he said.

"There's been a number of complaints about that process."

Most likely, they will apply for refugee status, he said.

"Other than that there aren't a lot of options."

They could also apply to remain in Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, although it is less likely to be successful, he said.

Refugees must prove they face persecution at home. The fact they were willing to risk their lives to cross the ocean crammed into the hull of the dilapidated ship says a lot, Stockholder said.

Carlos Gaete, the director of the Victoria Immigrant and Refugee Centre Society, agreed.

"Refugees who go through all this trouble to get to Canada, they must be desperate," Gaete said. But there is not much the society can do for the illegal immigrants for now.

"Everything is in the hands of Immigration and the RCMP," Gaete said.

"As soon as they apply for refugee status, then we can help them."

The discovery of the dilapidated ship was the largest group of illegal immigrants ever discovered along the West Coast

In 1987, a group of 174 Sikh refugee claimants arrived in Nova Scotia without paperwork. The majority remain in Canada, said Halifax lawyer Lee Cohen.