Thursday, September 16, 1999

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.