More Chinese slip into Canada
By ANDREW MITROVICA Globe and Mail ---January 03, 2001
Toronto ? Illegal Chinese migrants continue to flow into Canada almost unabated despite pledges from Beijing to Ottawa that it is working to halt the illicit trade, a senior police officer says.
"I understand that there have been people coming in all the time, regularly," said Detective Constable Ray Miu of the Toronto Police's Combined Forces Asian Investigative Unit. "There are still people involved in this alien smuggling."
A source close to the continuing human-smuggling schemes said that as many as 300 migrants have surreptitiously entered Canada from Fujian province in southeastern China since early September.
Most of the Chinese migrants entered Canada by cargo ships via the West Coast and, in a new twist, by container into Montreal, before heading for the United States, the source said. "Business continues to be brisk."
The source said four cargo ships dropped off most of the migrants close to the southern B.C. coastline, where they were then ferried onshore and subsequently made their way inland, undetected. At least one other cargo ship carried a small number of migrants by container to Montreal from Europe.
(Criminal kingpins are believed to have organized four boatloads of nearly 600 Chinese migrants in the summer of 1999. Most made refugee claims, but only 24 have been granted refugee status.)
The human trafficking continues despite the fact that in September of 1999, then-foreign-minister Lloyd Axworthy received assurances from Chinese authorities that China would work diligently to crack down on the human-smuggling rings.
The two governments also committed themselves to co-operate in criminal investigations by sharing information on suspects and witnesses.
And in April, China promised Immigration Minister Elinor Caplan that it would post hundreds of extra security forces on the Fujian coast to prevent an exodus of illegal migrants to Canada.
The source said there was a temporary lull in the highly lucrative trade after U.S. authorities, with the help of a Canadian undercover agent, cracked a major human-smuggling ring in the spring that been shipping migrants from Fujian to the United States via the Windsor-Detroit border.
But the source said the human trafficking picked up steam again in the fall, confirming predictions by Canadian and U.S. authorities that Chinese migrants, desperate for a new life, would continue to pay in excess of $50,000 a head to criminal syndicates to ship them to North America.
Once they arrived, in September and after, the latest group of illegal migrants were split into smaller groups and then travelled to Toronto by chartered bus, posing as a Chinese tour group, as well as by train, plane or concealed in tractor trailers, the source said.
There, the migrants were holed up in safe houses for as long as six weeks.
Det. Constable Miu said that Toronto is dotted with homes that shield illegal migrants until they can make plans to move into the United States. "This is routine," he said. "There will be somebody here to accommodate them while they arrange an opportunity to go down [to the United States.]"
A spokesman for Ms. Caplan said Tuesday he was unaware that any Chinese migrants have slipped into Canada undetected and noted that the number of illegal Chinese migrants seized in the United States dropped dramatically last year.
But Staff Sergeant Glen Rockwell of the RCMP's Immigration and Passport Task Force said in an interview from Vancouver Tuesday that rough weather in the fall and winter months usually acts as a deterrent to the human-smuggling trade. He acknowledged that cargo ships could ferry migrants close to the B.C. coastline. "It would be a treacherous journey, but certainly not impossible," he said.
Staff Sgt. Rockwell added, however, that Chinese authorities are assisting in the interdiction effort by seizing vessels bound for Canada from Fujian and Hong Kong.
Jim Redmond, manager of Citizenship and Immigration on Vancouver Island, said that human smugglers appear to have switched courses, turning to Europe as a routing point.
He added that there are still concerns that Chinese migrants are being smuggled into Canada in containers. "I think it is naive to say that's the end of it, and Canada won't have to worry about it in the future." |
