 Posted at 09:25 p.m. PDT; Sunday,
September 19, 1999
Waves of boat people divide
Chinese-Canadians in B.C.
by Alex Tizon Seattle
Times staff reporter
VANCOUVER, B.C. - The overriding sentiment in the cafes and street
corners of Chinatown is "please, no more boats." It is both a plea and a
hope, made up of equal parts concern and anger.
Some of the meanest grumbling over the recent wave of Chinese boat
people has come from the Chinese-Canadian community, a sprawling, vibrant,
300,000-strong body composed in large part of new immigrants. Some of the
harshest critics of the boat people were themselves refugees a mere decade
ago.
"I don't like them (the boat people). They should be sent back. They
give a bad name to Chinese people," said Keiping Hou, 52, a transportation
engineer for the Canadian government. Hou came to Canada as a political
refugee in 1989 after the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Chinese-language newspapers have bristled with letters demanding the
Canadian government "get firm," that the boat people be "sent home," and
that they should "follow the rules" for becoming legal immigrants like
other Chinese Canadians.
In the past eight weeks, the Canadian navy has seized four ships
attempting to smuggle Chinese migrants into British Columbia. The last
one, captured 10 days ago just south of Nootka Sound, carried 146 Chinese.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said two earlier ships
successfully smuggled migrants into British Columbia undetected.
The number of migrants from the four captured ships approaches 600.
They are being held in detention centers and prisons throughout British
Columbia at a minimum cost of $200 a day per person. Most of the migrants
are seeking refugee status, which would allow them to stay in Canada. The
process of reviewing all the refugee claims will take up to a year,
assuming no more ships arrive.
But from the grapevine that snakes through Chinatown and beyond, the
word is more ships are under way, as many as a dozen, plowing through the
ocean toward North America. No one knows how many, if any - given the
publicity of the four captured ships - will try to land on Canadian
shores.
For the Chinese-Canadian community, the spectacle of the past two
months has exposed deep divisions among those sympathetic with the boat
people, and those who would send them back first and ask questions later.
But personal lines of demarcation are not so clearly drawn. Many people
feel torn between allegiance to their new country and loyalty to the
people of their old one.
`A feeling it could be endless'
While the boatloads of migrants provide dramatic material for news
media, the recent wave of boat people in no way makes up "the largest
human smuggling operation in Canadian history," as one newspaper reported.
Two years ago, U.S. and Canadian authorities busted an international
smuggling ring that funneled an estimated 3,600 illegal Chinese into the
U.S. through Toronto and Vancouver. The Pacific Forum, a think tank in
Hawaii, estimates as many as 100,000 illegal Chinese migrants reach the
U.S annually, a large percentage of them through Canada.
Most migrants seeking refugee status in Canada come by plane, with no
dramatic entrances and no publicity. There were more than 20,000 refugee
claimants in Canada last year, about 1,500 of them from China.
"It's not the numbers themselves - they're only a fraction of the
people who come to Canada (as refugees)," said Victor Wong about the
recent boat people. Wong heads the Vancouver Association of Chinese
Canadians, which helps settle Chinese refugees. "There's a stigma attached
to refugees who come by boat. Especially when they come one after the
other. There's a feeling it could be endless."
Wong, along with immigration officials and lawyers who've had direct
contact with the boat people, have pieced together parts of their story.
Most of the boat people are reluctant to talk about the smugglers who
arranged their journeys, called "snakeheads" in China. People-smuggling is
considered one of the most lucrative practices of Chinese organized crime.
The fear among the detainees is that the snakeheads would harm their
families back home.
All the boat people come from Fujian province on the southeast China
coast, directly across the strait from Taiwan. Most are rural peasants,
street vendors or fishermen. The majority are uneducated and speak no
English.
They are believed to have each pledged as much as $40,000 to the
snakeheads for the journey across the ocean. Wong said he knows of no
migrant who has paid the full amount.
The passage takes four to 10 weeks, with passengers crammed into
squalid cargo holds, eating rice once or twice a day. Those who gave a
down payment are awarded privileges such as roomier quarters or time on
the deck. Some fall ill, many get seasick.
Once in Canadian waters, the plan calls for the migrants to be moved
ashore on small boats where snakeheads would pick them up and smuggle them
through Vancouver or Toronto into the U.S.
Immigration officials believe the ultimate destination for many
migrants is New York City, where an estimated 500,000 Fujianese immigrants
- 400,000 of them illegal - labor in an underground economy. Many work in
garment sweatshops for as little as $1 an hour. They work for as long as
necessary to pay off the snakeheads.
"The understanding is that employment is found for them," said George
Varnai, of Citizenship and Immigration Canada. "It's part of the package,
the voyage and then the job."
`They're doomed here'
The Chinese-Canadian community in Vancouver sees the boat people as an
embarrassment and a reminder of their own past, said Wong, the activist.
"They look at these people and see who they were before and it makes them
uncomfortable."
Many Chinese Canadians argue that detaining or sending home the boat
people is for their own safety.
"They've started on a life that they have no idea about. They would be
subject to the whims of criminals," said Cindy Chan Piper, a city planner
and a Chinese community advocate. "If they're sent back home, as poor as
it is there, they can function, they have family and people to take care
of them. They won't have that here. They're doomed here."
There are really two Chinatowns of Greater Vancouver: the traditional
one of quaint shops and hideaway restaurants off East Pender Street and
the city of Richmond, just south of Vancouver, a place of new shopping
malls and office buildings.
Nearly half of the estimated 300,000 Chinese Canadians of Greater
Vancouver live in Richmond and other nearby suburbs, most of them
professionals and business people who have migrated within the past two
decades. Many came from Hong Kong, bringing with them money and
connections.
Mainland China for years has been the No. 1 source of legal immigrants
to Canada, totaling some 20,000 annually. The influx into Vancouver has
given rise to a "little China," with its own network of Chinese-language
media, banks, businesses and civic groups. It's estimated that 50 percent
of Chinese in Vancouver speak little or no English.
And because Canada has among the most lenient immigration laws in the
world, it draws refugees worldwide. More than 2,000 Chinese sought
political asylum in Vancouver after the 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square.
Many of these political refugees had to endure years of waiting and
jumping hoops to gain legal status in the country.
"The anger comes from a feeling that they (the boat people and the
snakeheads) are cheating the system," said Angela Kan, executive director
of the Chinese Cultural Centre of Vancouver. The boat people are sometimes
called "queue-jumpers."
Artist Gu Xiong, 45, came as a political refugee in 1990. In China, he
was a university art professor. But his first years in Canada were spent
working three menial jobs to support his wife and daughter. He still
remembers the routine: from 5 a.m. to 10 a.m. he worked at a laundry, 11
a.m. to 4 p.m. at a car wash, and 5 to 11 p.m. at a pizza shop.
If refugees like Gu Xiong, highly educated and resourceful, struggled
in Canada, what's in store for the boat people who are in many cases
illiterate and unsophisticated? This is the question asked by opponents of
the boat people.
"Life was very, very hard," Gu Xiong said. "I was very ashamed. I could
not look at people. My face was red."
Like other past refugees, Gu Xiong, now an art instructor at the
University of British Columbia, said he feels sympathy for all sides.
"I understand why they came. They want a better life. When you're poor,
you dream to be wealthy, and it's so easy to be convinced to go to Canada
or America. They come with dreams. But without English, without education,
they'll be like slaves here. I can't blame Canada for sending them back."
Massive displacement in China
Fujian Province is home to 30 million people. Though it's poor by
Western standards, it is relatively prosperous compared to China's
interior provinces, where unemployment is at a level incomprehensible to
many Westerners.
China's free-market revolution has benefited certain groups but has
caused massive displacement and instability, said Jonathan Adelman, a
China scholar at the University of Denver.
Government-run industries have gone bankrupt and laid off tens of
millions of workers. To say there is a surplus of labor is a great
understatement, Adelman said. Of the 400 million people who live in
cities, 40 million are unemployed. Most Chinese, about 900 million, live
in rural areas.
"If one-third of this rural population disappeared today, there would
be no discernible impact to the economy," Adelman said. "They're
superfluous economically."
In addition, there are between 80 million to 120 million people who
make up what the Chinese government calls a "floating labor force." They
are migrant laborers who go from city to city looking for whatever work
they can get.
Tens of thousands of migrant workers from the interior have moved to
the Eastern seaboard and, with their cheaper labor, have displaced many
native Fujianese, long a seafaring people. Fujianese men often see no
other option but to sail to other lands to find work. Villages with few or
no men left are not uncommon in Fujian province
In recent years, Fujianese have stowed away on ships heading to Taiwan,
the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Guam and all parts of North
America. This month alone, the Australian government sent back 186
Fujianese boat people, and the U.S. government turned back 141 Fujianese
boat people intercepted near Guam.
Canadian officials hope the coming October storms in the North Pacific
will deter more people-smuggling boats while the government tries to
figure out how to deal with the problem. Canadian leaders have opened a
dialogue with Chinese leaders on the subject, and the RCMP is preparing to
send a team to Fujian Province this fall.
The Canadian navy, which monitors the ocean as far as 500 nautical
miles from the coastline, is watching closely for more boats steaming
toward North America.
Considering the decrepit condition of the impounded ships, many wonder
if some human-cargo vessels simply did not made it across the ocean or
whether future ships might be catastrophes waiting to happen.
"North Pacific storms can be very rough," said Lt. Commander Gerry Pash
of the Canadian navy. "If these vessels hit a storm and try to ride it
out, they may not make it. We may never know what happened or we may find
evidence of what happened by finding bodies on beaches from Queen
Charlotte to Oregon."
Researcher Steve Selter and interpreter Nancy Li contributed to this
report
Alex Tizon's phone message number is 206-464-2216.
Copyright © 1999
Seattle Times Company
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