VANCOUVER, July 31 (AFP) - Canadian immigration officials decided to detain all but eight of the 123 Chinese migrants taken from an intercepted boat last week amid fears that international people smugglers may be targeting Canada, officials said.

The Chinese boat people had been aboard an aging, unmarked vessel when it was intercepted by the Canadian Coast Guard off the coast of Vancouver Island on July 21.

The Canadian government ruled Friday that 115 of the ethnic Chinese refugee claimants would spend at least another week in custody.

Eight of the illegal immigrants, aged 14 to 18, were released Thursday into foster homes under the supervision of British Columbia's Ministry of Families.

"Immigration is continuing to work on establishing their identity," Immigration spokeswoman Lorna Tessier said of the detained migrants.

The refugee claimants being kept at the Canadian Forces Base in Esquimalt on Vancouver Island have been fingerprinted and photographed, with the information sent to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation to check if any have criminal records.

Wearing green coveralls and white tennis shoes, the Chinese appeared briefly before an Immigration and Refugee Board adjudicator Friday handcuffed in twos.

A lawyer representing six of the refugee claimants said the men deny being part of a smuggling operation.

The Chinese migrants told police that their boat left the eastern province of Fujian 39 days earlier on a voyage that some said cost 40,000 Canadian dollars (26,600 dollars), a lifetime's worth of wages for the average Chinese worker.

Immigration Minister Lucienne Robillard earlier denied Canada has become a haven for people smugglers, or snakeheads as they are called in China.

"We have to work against the traffickers not people who are sometimes victims," she said in Ottawa on Wednesday.

A similar unmarked freighter was discovered in the same region two weeks earlier, but had been empty. However, police suspect smugglers had already unloaded illegal passengers.

A senior official of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) warned about the dangers of letting the boat people stay in Canada.

"If they get let in and assimilated into society, you can bet your bottom dollar there's going to be a lot more coming," Staff Sergeant Glen Rockwell, of the RCMP's immigration and passport section, said earlier in the week.

Most agree that sentences in Canada are light compared to other countries like the United States, Australia and New Zealand where the illegal immigrants can be detained indefinitely.

The maximum penalty for people smuggling in Canada is five years, compared to 20 years in Australia.