Thursday, September 16,
1999 U.S. heeded warning on illegal
migrants; will Canada?
National Post
They have flooded British Columbia's prisons, diverted the
attention of the RCMP from domestic issues, tied up the coast guard,
taxed social services agencies and overwhelmed the Immigration
Department.
And still the illegal Chinese immigrants, who have been arriving
here in rusty freighters, keep washing ashore. Nearly 600 migrants
have been intercepted on four ships so far this summer -- and there
are warnings that more boats may be on the way.
Of course there are. China has a free-floating population of 150
million surplus workers, many of whom dream of finding jobs in the
United States. And Canada's immigration policy has propped the back
door wide open for them.
Experts say that stemming the tide of boat people will require a
major law enforcement effort, coupled with significant changes in
immigration policy. But so far, Ottawa has opted for a muted
response.
"Canada is preparing for more ships and more refugees, but very
little of the process has been changed," says Dr. Robert Bedeski, a
political scientist and expert on northeast Asia security issues at
the University of Victoria.
"This is playing a very dangerous game. The message is: come on
over, you'll be received, fed, given clothing -- and set loose to
continue to your destination."
Canada's non-response to the crisis contrasts sharply with what
happened in the U.S. in 1993, after a single ship, carrying 300
illegal Chinese immigrants, tried to get ashore in New York City.
Shortly after 2 a.m. on June 7, a freighter ran aground on a sand
bar just off Queens, N.Y., spilling a human cargo into the cold
Atlantic. Ten drowned, 200 others, some dressed in business suits,
some in their underwear, were pulled from the water, and 100 more
were found huddled on the squalid ship, where they had lived under
wretched conditions for three months. The Golden Venture -- a ship,
incidentally, which had earlier visited Vancouver's harbour without
attracting notice -- convinced the U.S. government that the human
smuggling racket was both dangerous to the immigrants and a threat
to the nation's stability. Within months of the Golden Venture
incident, the Clinton Administration passed anti-alien-smuggling
legislation, speeded up deportation hearings, stopped granting
political asylum to those who said they were fleeing China because
of its restrictive family planning laws, and had law enforcement
agencies target organized crime associated with smuggling.
Within months, Kwok Ling-kay, the leader of Fuk Ching, one of New
York's most powerful gangs, had been extradited from his base in
China's Fujian province to face charges of organizing a
human-smuggling ring. The crackdown curtailed smuggling directly to
the U.S. -- but it also resulted in a shift to Canada and Mexico as
the favoured points of entry. U.S. officials now say B.C. is the
sole entry point for thousands of illegal Chinese entering their
country from Canada every year.
Asked recently about the growing crisis on the West Coast, Jean
Chretien, the Prime Minister, brushed it off as a minor problem. His
comments indicated he has no understanding either of the magnitude
of the situation, or its root causes.
Chinese officials said Canada should simply ship the migrants
back to China, but Mr. Chretien responded by defending federal laws,
which allow illegal aliens to claim refugee status, giving them two
years to either make their case -- or sneak into the U.S.
"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," said Mr. Chretien, who apparently thinks the
boat people intend to stay here.
"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."
Mr. Chretien indicated he felt the illegal migrants were fleeing
for good reason, because they "were not treated normally" at home.
In fact, researchers with the Canadian Security Intelligence
Service, the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Center for the
Study of Asian Enterprise Crime have all examined this issue in
detail and concluded the same thing -- the immigrants are coming for
economic reasons. They are coming to make money, not to flee
oppression or to voice disfavour with the Communist regime.
"So, money is the major motive for them to come here to the
United States, and a lot of people say, 'Well, U.S. dollars were the
best thing on Earth. I often dream about having lots of U.S.
dollars.' So, that's the number one reason," states Dr. Ko-Lin Chin,
an associate professor at Rutgers University, School of Criminal
Justice, based in New Jersey.
Mr. Chin interviewed 300 illegal immigrants working in New York
City. They had been making an average wage of $50 a month in China.
Doing menial jobs in New York's restaurant, construction and garment
trades, they were earning $1,500 a month. Most could pay off their
smuggling debts within three years. For them, the trip was an
investment.
Paul George, an Asian expert, wrote a paper for CSIS in 1994
warning that an unbalanced economy on the Chinese mainland would
lead to an exodus of young workers.
With farmers in China paid $173 (US) a year by the central
government, and urban dwellers getting about $370, there was an
economic disparity that would push people into the cities -- where
there wasn't enough work. From there, they would look overseas.
"In a booming money culture, the peasants can no longer be kept
on the farm by patriotic slogans and appeals to the state ideology,"
wrote Mr. George. "However, the peasants are caught in a poverty
trap. Their incomes in the rural areas are in relative decline, yet
the opportunities for finding rewarding work in the overcrowded
coastal areas are also slim. Emigration is thus increasingly seen as
a last chance to break the poverty cycle, and emigration 'services'
have expanded to meet demand. Smuggling people for profit has become
one more facet of the emerging market economy in China."
Mr. George's analysis for CSIS correctly predicted the U.S.
crackdown on illegals would shift smuggling routes north.
"Canada should anticipate the arrival of large numbers of Chinese
boat people off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts in the years to
come," he stated. "A number of factors indicate that
people-smuggling from China will become an increasingly serious
problem ... the tide of illegal immigrants is expected to grow."
And he warned that the trend could threaten Canada's stability.
"Large population flows, regardless of whether they are legal or
illegal, are potential(ly) destabilizing for the recipient countries
...
"Such concerns would include the political impact of the influx
of massive numbers of people, especially in volumes that would swamp
the capacity of the country's immigrant-processing facilities,
challenge Canada's asylum policy, and cause domestic political
problems."
Here on the West Coast, it is obvious the crisis point is
approaching fast, but, as Bill Vander Zalm, the president of the
Reform party in B.C., noted this week, it may take planeloads of
illegal immigrants arriving in Ottawa to wake up the federal
government.
In the meantime, expect the ships to keep coming.
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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