Thursday, September 16,
1999 How poor nations help migrants get
into Canada Thousands easily buy
passports
Fabian Dawson The
Province
VICTORIA - Chinese gangs operating out of the Caribbean and South
America are warehousing illegal migrants by the thousands before
helping them enter Canada.
In addition, many Chinese nationals are buying citizenships from
tiny, impoverished nations in the South Pacific, Central America and
Africa to facilitate entry into Canada as tourists before
disappearing.
The extent of these operations makes the recent boat arrivals in
B.C. look small, according to immigration and RCMP officials who
have investigated human smuggling over the last few years.
"There is a more serious and voluminous side to the alien
smuggling rackets that is not as dramatic or visible as the boat
people in B.C.," said Peter Lamey, a spokesman for Immigration
Canada in Ottawa.
Immigration and RCMP intelligence information obtained by The
Province in Vancouver shows:
- Chinese gangs entrenched in Guatemala City and Sao Paulo,
Brazil, are helping Chinese nationals get citizenship papers before
applying for visitor visas to enter Canada. In one investigation
involving human smuggling to Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, RCMP
officers from B.C. travelled to Brazil. They were shocked to find
that the Canadian diplomatic mission was issuing an average of
40,000 visitor visas a year, many to Chinese with Brazilian
citizenship.
Since there are no exit checks in Canada, there is no estimate of
how many have returned.
- In Toronto, an investigation found a top triad gang leader
helping illegal aliens to obtain citizenship papers from the
Dominican Republic.
- In Vancouver, Immigration officials at the airport have
detected Chinese nationals entering the country with newly purchased
citizenships and passports from the South Pacific island nations of
Tuvalu, Tonga and Nauru.
- In Europe, tens of thousands of illegal migrants are awaiting
the second stage of their journey to North America. Some are getting
fake visas produced by Russian gangs. Others are being shipped to
Guatemala, Surinam and Belize to obtain local citizenship papers
before applying to go to either the United States or Canada.
- In Africa, Nigerian criminal organizations are helping to ferry
illegal migrants to Brazil, Belize and Surinam to get citizenship
papers.
"This system has brought thousands into Canada and is still
bringing thousands more," said Brian McAdam, a former Immigration
Canada control officer who was based in Hong Kong and Barbados.
Paula Bennett of Immigration Canada said officials at Vancouver
International Airport keep a close watch for Chinese nationals
coming in with citizenships from South Pacific island nations. She
said the latest hot spot in the South Pacific seems to be Nauru,
which is selling passports to Chinese nationals for between $20,000
and $40,000.
"We have had between 15 and 20 recently," she said.
Tonga sells its passports with fine print that says re-entry into
the South Pacific nation is not guaranteed. "This helps us deny
entry of people we suspect," said Ms. Bennett.
A senior RCMP officer said most alien smuggling cases involving
South and Central America are the work of criminal groups working
with high level officials in small countries to get citizenships and
passports.
"The boat people in B.C. are opening the eyes of the Canadian
public to a system that is being totally abused," he said, stressing
his name cannot be used because he will face disciplinary action for
speaking out against Immigration Canada. "This has been going on for
some time, and every few years we get a new hot spot," said the
officer.
The latest hot spot for staging Chinese nationals for entry into
the United States and Canada is Surinam, said author Jeffrey
Robinson.
"You have got the good guys with no money trying to stop the bad
guys with all the money," said Mr. Robinson in a telephone interview
from London.
"There are 50,000 ethnic Chinese living there [in Surinam] right
now, making up 10% of the population," said Mr. Robinson, whose
latest book, The Merger, looks at the corporatization of organized
crime groups in Canada. In his book, Mr. Robinson says Canada is
second only to the U.S. as the destination of choice for Chinese
migrants.
Mr. Lamey, of Immigration Canada, said the selling of passports
by small nations to facilitate travel to Canada is a long-standing
problem.
"We rely on our ICOs to use local expertise when issuing visas,"
he said.
Canada and the U.S. are also sharing intelligence information on
migrant patterns run by criminal organizations in Central America.
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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