Thursday, June 15

PAUL SULLIVAN

Thursday, June 15, 2000

It's not easy being an illegal immigrant from China.

First you spend weeks in passage huddled in a squalid, dangerous old boat.

Then you wash up on some rocky, rainy shore thousands of miles from your eventual destination, New York City.

As you're rounded up and herded off to jail before a crowd of jeering locals, somebody in the crowd lifts a trumpet to his lips and plays a derisive round of O Canada.

You spend the next 10 months locked up and humiliated as it becomes increasingly obvious that your legal appeals are going to be rejected and you're going to be sent back to China, where it's only going to get worse.

Yeesh. All this probably explains why 49 men rioted on Monday at the Alouette River Correctional Centre in Maple Ridge, B.C. The riot was triggered by a disciplinary lockdown that came after a number of inmates refused to eat dinner on Sunday night, but, really, how much of this stuff can a guy stand?

And what was it all for, anyway? Of the 599 migrants who turned up on the West Coast last summer, 113 have already been deported, and another 100 have exhausted all their legal claims and are ready to be sent back. So far, it looks as if precious few will be allowed to stay.

Of course, there are a bunch who have been released on bond and have just disappeared. And more than 30 teenagers placed in foster homes have also opted to sneak away and head for the Golden Mountain on their own.

Really, this is a human tragedy of no small proportion. Families have been split apart; ordinary people have been driven to desperate behaviour -- jailbreaks and attempted suicides. People have died from their harrowing journey. But the illegals are getting no sympathy from the citizens of British Columbia.

The Vancouver Province, its ear exquisitely attuned to the popular point of view, sums it up: "We say, no, on a plane home is where they belong," declared a recent editorial. "People bent on trying to jump the immigration queue by arriving on our shores must be shown the door, immediately."

And there are few open arms in Vancouver's large Chinese community, either. With notable exceptions such as Victor Wong, executive director of the Vancouver Association of Chinese Canadians, who has become their advocate, the local Chinese community is united in believing that the government should do nothing to encourage these illegal queue jumpers.

There are odd, poignant little stories that speak of human interaction between the illegals and British Columbians. A foster mother, for example, broke the rules and gave a goodbye party for two children, 9 and 13, in her care who were then deported. She worries what will happen to them when they return to China. And well she should.

Mostly, though, there has been outrage. It has cost Canada $30-million so far to care for these people, and the costs mount daily. Despite the dreadful June weather, it's summer, and there are dire predictions that the flotilla of illegals will soon be under way again.

If China were still officially demonized as an oppressive regime, these people might be hailed as heroes and the red carpet of asylum rolled out. But now that the Canadian and U.S. governments are falling all over themselves to gain access to a market of a billion people, China has been transformed into our big buddy, and the illegals are merely ingrates. That the same old thugs have been in charge since 1949 seems to have been forgotten.

Why do these people risk their necks to seek the Golden Mountain? We have no idea. And we apparently don't care. We resent everything about them, and the fact that we have to house them and feed them -- especially when they complain about the food.

The quickest way to solve the problem is to take Victor Wong's advice: Release these wretches from jail and board them in the community while they await their fate. There seems little doubt they will bolt (wouldn't you?) for those legendary U.S. havens collectively known as the Golden Mountain.

Of course, that won't happen. The United States doesn't want them any more than we do and will protest vehemently if we just hold the back door open. Fate has made us their jailers. Perhaps if they understand that this path to the Golden Mountain is permanently blocked, they'll stay home and try to make the best of it.

More likely, they'll head for some other port of call and this sad story will unfold somewhere else, far away. But then we won't have to worry about why they're so determined to leave home in the first place, and why we're so hostile when they get here.


E-mail: psulli@sullivanmedia.com

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