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Monday, September 13, 1999

Sheldon Alberts
National Post

Chuck Stoody, The Canadian Press Two illegal migrants housed at CFB Esquimalt make their way to portable toilets at the compound on Saturday.

AUCKLAND, New Zealand - Jean Chretien, the Prime Minister, defended Canada's refugee system yesterday after Chinese officials complained it was responsible for the flood of illegal migrants washing up in British Columbia.

Following a meeting with the Chinese president, Mr. Chretien said he is happy with Canada's immigration laws even though they are sometimes abused by foreign citizens without legitimate asylum claims.

"The problem is, of course, we have laws that induce some people to abuse of the law, but Canada is a generous country and we have had this situation since a long time," the prime minister said after a private chat with Jiang Zemin at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation conference.

The two leaders agreed to implement a recently signed agreement allowing Chinese and Canadian police to co-operate in investigations surrounding so-called "snakehead" crime gangs which have been smuggling illegal migrants in ships from Fujian province to British Columbia.

Since July, at least four ships carrying 600 illegal migrants have dumped their human cargo on the coast of British Columbia, sparking widespread criticism of Canadian immigration and refugee laws.

The latest ship, carrying 146 migrants, arrived on Friday at the CFB Esquimalt naval base. Initial examinations were being conducted this weekend by immigration officials. Barbed-wire perimeter fencing was being installed around a playing field at the base, as the military struggled to house the growing number of boat people.

Immigration officials said yesterday they were not tracking any more incoming ships.

Under terms of a Canada-China agreement signed last spring, RCMP officers plan to travel to Fujian province to work with the Chinese public security bureau in an attempt to identify the smugglers and stop the ships before they leave.

But during meetings at the APEC conference with Lloyd Axworthy, the Foreign Affairs Minister, Chinese officials said Canada should simply ship the migrants back to China.

The Chinese minister "was quite vociferous in his case that the slow processing of deportees from Canada in fact was an incentive for people to be sent here because they clearly thought they would be able to stay in Canada for longer periods of time," Mr. Axworthy said.

But Mr. Chretien dismissed the criticisms, and fired his own back at the Chinese, who he said are embarrassed that their citizens want to flee the country.

"Of course any government tends to be offended when somebody says that he is not treated normally in his country, because you need a reason to remain as refugees. So any country don't like their citizens to become refugees for political reasons in another country," he said.

"But it is the law we have had in Canada for a long time and I think we are not about to just return the people without hearing what they have to say."

He rejected outright the idea of sending the migrants back without due process, even though refugee claims -- and subsequent appeals -- often take more than a year to complete.

"If you come by plane, you come by boat, you walk, you swim, when you are on the ground, you say 'I want to be a refugee' and the law of Canada applies. But if they don't leave China, they won't come," Mr. Chretien said.

Canada's immigration laws have been under steady fire since the first rusty migrant ship was intercepted on July 20. Elinor Caplan, the Immigration Minister, is considering expanded measures to detain people smuggled illegally into Canada. But she says she does not want to follow the example of the United States, which detains illegal aliens as a deterrent to false refugee claims.

Two Liberal MPs -- Bill Graham, the chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee and Sophie Leung, a Vancouver MP -- travelled to China this weekend and have been asked by Mr. Axworthy to follow up on the people smuggling issue with senior Chinese officials.

The memorandum of understanding signed between China and Canada allows the countries to co-operate in crime prevention against "trans-national organized crime" and "crimes related to border controls, including illegal immigration and the smuggling of, and trafficking in, human beings."

Mr. Axworthy said it is particularly important for Canada to share information with Chinese officials about the location and identity of the migrants and their smugglers -- because they often burn their identification before arriving in Canada.

"The Chinese minister agreed that under this memorandum of co-operation that we could work on that as well. I think we opened the door and I did speak to Mrs. Caplan today about that. We had exchanges.

"She thinks this is a good grounds now for her officials to begin working actively with the Chinese. So I think that there was an opportunity to develop a more co-operative approach with the Chinese on this matter."

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.