September 30, 1999
Canada Starts to Take Hard Line Against Illegal Chinese
Immigration
By JAMES BROOKE
ORT 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."
