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September 30, 1999

Canada Starts to Take Hard Line Against Illegal Chinese Immigration

By JAMES BROOKE

PORT HARDY, British Columbia -- When the Canadian navy made a group of undocumented Chinese migrants get off a ship here recently, a local man brought his dogs to the dock and encouraged them to bark at the men and women wrapped in blankets against the cold.

For Canadian officials, the confrontation represented one victory in what they say is a rapidly growing effort to smuggle in illegal immigrants. This summer alone, they confiscated four trawlers and detained 560 undocumented Chinese citizens who wanted to make Canada their home.

Western Canada is only one destination in a pan-Pacific surge this year in illegal Chinese migrants. In the last 16 months, U.S. Coast Guard ships have intercepted 20 ships carrying undocumented Chinese in U.S. territorial waters around Guam. In the last six months, Australia has intercepted 21 boatloads of illegal migrants, primarily Chinese.

"We're now experiencing the largest smuggling operation ever experienced in Canada," Rob Johnston, manager of immigration enforcement here, told reporters recently.

Steven Weeks, an Australian diplomat in Ottawa, said of Canada's sudden concern: "It's deja vu. The element of the public debate and concern is very similar to Australia."

As Australia, the United States and Canada increasingly share intelligence about vessels believed to be carrying migrants from southeastern China, Canada has started to take the harder line traditional in the other two countries.

After the first Chinese ship was intercepted, on July 20, the authorities in Vancouver released 74 immigrants, pending resolution of their petitions for refugee status. Within a month, half had disappeared, presumably for the United States.

Since then Canada has adopted a policy of detaining all undocumented passengers on vessels from China. Sentiment for immediately deporting them is markedly higher in western Canada than in provinces on the Atlantic seaboard, opinion polls indicate.

Vancouver's population is 20 percent ethnic Chinese, and many of these Chinese-Canadians fear that each new boatload batters a carefully constructed racial tolerance.

"Vancouver is a very tolerant society," said Derick Y.H. Cheng, chairman of the Chinese Cultural Center there. "We fear this will make a backlash, give people the stereotype that Chinese do not abide by the law."

Former British Columbia Premier Bill Vander Zalm has jumped back into politics, starting his campaign for Parliament by saying that the federal government would pay attention to the immigration issue only if all the illegal Chinese immigrants detained in the region were shipped to Ottawa.

"I am sure you would get some action then," he said.

Canadian newspapers portray the boatloads of migrants, largely from Fujian province, as job-seekers rather than freedom-seekers. Not long ago, Elinor Caplan, Canada's new immigration minister, toured a Vancouver Island navy base where 225 immigrants are detained and said at a packed news conference: "We are intercepting, boarding and apprehending those ships. We are then using greater powers of detention to insure people on the boat do not flee. The system is working."

Canadian officials are also reaching across the Pacific, asking Chinese authorities to help.

At the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting in New Zealand, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien discussed the migration problem with Chinese President Jiang Zemin. "I told him we needed collaboration because they could hopefully stop the departure of the ships from the coast of China that are coming to our coast," Chretien said later. "He recognized that, and said he was willing to collaborate with us."



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