Tuesday, November 09,
1999 Human smuggling in Fujian probed a
year ago
Confidential report
Marina Jimenez
National
Post
Chinese officials hold Canada's "strict visa policy" partly
responsible for the tide of illegal migrants flowing into Canada,
according to a confidential government report.
Fujian government officials complained to their Canadian
counterparts during an August, 1998, visit that processing time for
immigrant visas was too long, prompting many people to attempt to
enter Canada illegally. Zi Yu Ren, director general of Fujian's
Foreign Affairs Office, said it could take as long as three years to
get an immigrant visa from Canada's embassy in Beijing, compared to
less than 12 months at Canadian posts elsewhere.
Zu Hua Zhang, director of the provincial Public Security Bureau
(PSB), also attributed the problem of Fujian's illegal migration to
Canada's "very liberal refugee policy," that encourages people to
remain in Canada as refugee claimants.
"Although originally the PSB stated that the problem largely
stems from Canadian government policy, later it was acknowledged
that smugglers are preying on the poorly informed," the report
concludes.
The 20-page document, obtained under Access to Information by
immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, reveals that the Canadian
government began investigating the problem of human smuggling in
Fujian a year before the arrival this summer in B.C. of 600 Chinese
migrants aboard smuggling ships.
The Canadian government organized the official visit to China, in
August, 1998, to investigate the "high level of fraud and illegal
immigration" in Fujian.
Huguette Shouldice, a spokeswoman for Citizenship and Immigration
Canada (CIC), acknowledged that demand for visa services in China
has increased more than 500% in the last four years, and said that
embassy staff has tripled. Last year, Canada issued 8,181 visas from
the Beijing embassy.
Ms. Shouldice, however, said it was difficult to link the demand
for visas to organized smuggling rings. She said Chinese
businessmen, students and visitors frustrated by delays in visa
processing would be unlikely to risk their lives for a $50,000
journey to Canada aboard a smuggling ship. "This does not make
sense," she said. "People coming to Canada with the help of
smugglers are not just trying to jump the cue. The majority are
poor, uneducated peasants who would be unlikely to make it through
our immigration processing point system."
In March, 1998, Caroline Melis, a deputy program manager with
CIC, and Tom Cumming, an immigration control officer, travelled to
Fujian, as well as three northeastern provinces, Liaoning, Jilin and
Heilongjiang, to investigate people smuggling. They also
investigated related issues such as the use of false documents, the
verification of school certificates and China's one-child policy.
They found that counterfeit documents and altered passports from
neighbouring Southeast Asian countries play a crucial role in
smuggling operations. Chinese nationals of Korean ethnicity abuse
South Korean passports, and migrants enter Canada illegally on
Southeast Asian airlines such as All Nippon Airlines.
While Chinese officials complained about Canada's visa policy,
they were willing to co-operate to improve the detection of
counterfeit documents, the verification of notarized documents and
to assist in the removal of Fujianese from Canada, the report noted.
Mr. Kurland, in Vancouver, said the report shows the Canadian
government knew that illicit migration was a problem at least a year
before the boat people arrived and took steps to combat it.
RELATED SITES:
(Each link opens a new window)
Citizenship and Immigration Canada
The brand-new white paper on immigration policy
Statistics Canada: Immigration and
Citizenship
Statistics from the 1996 national census that look at where
Canadians came from.
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