Saturday, September 11, 1999

Mark Hume
National Post

VANCOUVER - Thousands of Chinese migrants have landed on the British Columbia coast in the past few years, moving through Vancouver in a massive smuggling effort that funnels them across Canada and into the U.S.

The traffic has been going on for years, not just since this summer, when Canadian authorities have seized four immigrant ships from China, including one yesterday carrying as many as 170 people.

An official with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, in Buffalo, N.Y., said yesterday that there is little doubt that B.C. is the sole entry point for all the illegal Chinese migrants crossing the border from Canada.

He said the B.C. connection was exposed when agents from several agencies broke up an operation that had smuggled 3,500 Chinese nationals into the U.S.

"All of them had come in on the coast, off Vancouver," said Mike McLaughlin, assistant district director for investigations with the INS. He said the ring, broken up last year in a joint Canada-U.S. investigation, smuggled the Chinese migrants across the U.S. border on the Akwesasne Indian reserve.

"What we determined was the trek was from wherever in China, to the coast off Vancouver Island ... they were coming right through Vancouver.

"They were coming by boat," he said. "Earlier on, there were a lot of planes, but that seemed to dry up. Then the ships started coming."

Mr. McLaughlin said after coming ashore, the Chinese migrants were shuttled into Vancouver, then taken to Toronto, before being passed to Akwesasne and smuggled across to the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation on the U.S. side. They were all bound for New York City.

The smuggling operation, the largest ever broken up on the Canada-U.S. border, collected an estimated $170-million in fees from illegal Chinese over two years.

More than 40 people were arrested and charged with running the smuggling ring. Almost all have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing.

Mr. McLaughlin said that while law enforcement officials feel they knocked out the Akwesasne operation, the recent wave of ships intercepted by the Canadian Coast Guard off the West Coast shows the flow of illegal migrants never stopped.

"When we made the arrests [last year] it slowed down at first. Then we saw a jump of false documents in Tacoma [just south of Vancouver]. We started finding people on the backs of train cars at Niagara Falls. We're seeing them now in North Dakota.

"It seems like it's spreading out."

John Kyl, a U.S. senator, said recently that as American immigration officials tightened up on the Mexican border, there was a shift in illegal traffic to Canada.

In response, U.S. authorities have increased security efforts, including installing underground sensors near Blaine, Wash., and Buffalo.

Mr. McLaughlin said U.S. authorities believe the B.C. coast is the single entry point for all the Chinese migrants attempting to enter from Canada.

He said the smuggling ships are now being caught off the West Coast because the Canadian and U.S. coast guards are making a co-ordinated effort and are much more aware of the problem.

"I don't know how many [ships] you've missed," he said.

Mr. McLaughlin said that despite the stepped-up enforcement on the West Coast, U.S. immigration officials will still have to try and catch the migrants, because most won't be sent back to China by Canadian authorities.

The Akwesasne investigation indicated many of the illegals had previously been processed by Canadian immigration.

"If you had 1,000 refugee applications, I would say that 998 made the trek from Vancouver to Toronto and then to New York through the reservation," he said.

And Mr. McLaughlin said British Colombia has certainly not seen the end of smuggling ships.

"I think there's more coming. I don't know how many.

"We're working with the RCMP very closely trying to stop this flow of bodies, but there's only so much we can do."

RELATED SITES:

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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.