Vancouver Association of Chinese Canadians
Humanitarian Efforts
Our most recent work in advocating for the Chinese refugee claimants is posted below on this page. Please check out our links to other news sites and resources.
July 5, 2000
The Accepting and Forgiving Society
by Victor Yukmun Wong
July 20th marks the one year anniversary of the arrival of the first ship carrying Chinese refugee claimants to our shores. In all 624 people arrived aboard 4 ships last summer and inside a container in January. Almost everyone made a refugee claim and to date 16 Convention refugees have been identified.
VACC remains one of a number of organizations and individuals providing humanitarian assistance to the boat refugees. We have assisted Chinese refugees and refugee claimants since 1994 and sponsor a storefront settlement project with an active client base of 500. The arrival of the boat refugees has captured tremendous media attention and generated significant public discourse.
What have we learned in 12 months? What have I learned?
Well for one thing I have learned that the federal government will respond to the reactionary voices in our society. About 400 adults were detained in Canadian jails last summer, an extraordinary if not illegal response which served to criminalize and stigmatize these people and prejudice their refugee claim.
Some 260 adults celebrated Canada Day behind bars perhaps watching Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, a boat refugee herself, describe Canada as an 'accepting and forgiving society.' Her public servants in the immigration department even attempted to block over 100 people from making a refugee claim. They relented just days before the appeals were to be argued in Federal Court. And in fact some of the 16 Convention refugees determined to date were initially excluded from making a refugee claim.
Immigration Minister Caplan has become a captive of her department's enforcement agenda. Her officials sent 90 refused refugee claimants home on May 10th without considering the foreign policy implications. These people remain in a Fujian jail today facing 3 months jail and a $20,000RMB fine or one year of jail in lieu of the fine. After million or more in detention and related costs, the Minister has few political options but to ride through the enforcement programme until all cases are concluded maybe by Christmas.
Some Liberals suggest that the detention policy is being applied to protect the boat refugees. But do we protect people when we hand them back to their oppressors without any arrangements around their treatment upon return? If we really wanted to protect the boat refugees, we would land them or at the very least offer a temporary visa and immediate release from detention.
The domestic enforcement responses do not address the causes of their migration. What of China's human rights record? And the impact of government corruption, globalization and dislocation. What about our own unwelcoming immigration policies?
Why haven't we established an immigration outpost in Fujian province to advise local residents of the proper immigration process? We could provide visas locally and cut off the misinformation from traffickers. We could provide front-line assistance to refugees seeking sanctuary and issue them a visa on the spot.
We need more welcoming immigration policies that serve to open up the front door to ordinary people? Aboard the lorry found at Dover UK were people and a cargo of tomatoes. The tomatoes were legal. The people were criminalized, even in death.
We would never find Canadians aboard the back of a lorry. We travel aboard the passenger deck of these ferries because we can enter the UK without a visa and vice versa. But the Chinese like Iraqis, Afghanis, and Africans need visas to enter the UK and Canada. Their only options for entry are to make spontaneous asylum claims at the ports of entry. When we criminalize their migration, the mode of transportation becomes more dangerous and clandestine, with deadly results inside containers or a hermetically sealed lorry.
So many people have criminalized the boat refugees. Even people whose own families migrated in similar fashion from China to Hong Kong 50 years ago. Do the boat refugees remind them of their own struggles? The critics over exert themselves in their efforts to distance themselves from the boat refugees and even attack the local humanitarian advocacy. But these critics have not spent even one minute speaking with the boat refugees or helping out. Some even demanded that the boats be turned away, totally ignoring our Canadian laws and due processes. All of their opinions are based on media pictures and news articles, on rumour and gossip, on old country tribalism and simple narrow-mindedness.
When we reflect on the sojourning pioneers in our community and our families, we in fact find people who fit the profile of the boat refugees. The story of the boat refugees is another chapter in our country's immigration history just like the Sikhs aboard the Komagata Maru, the Jews aboard the St. Louis, the Vietnamese boat refugee resettlement, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Chinese paper sons, and DROC. Every installment of Canadian immigration history has been defined by its moments of compassion and of savagery. This is now our challenge to be or to fail to be the 'accepting and forgiving society'.
Our response to the boat refugees reflects what kind of people we are.
June 1st
Canadian Council For Refugees Spring Conference
Forum On Detention
University of BC, Vancouver BC
Sisters and Brothers, Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends
The Vancouver Association of Chinese Canadians is an anti-racism and human rights organization, and member chapter of the Chinese Canadian National Council which is a member of the Canadian Council For Refugees. We sponsor the SOS Chinese Settlement project, a front-line settlement program directed at refugees and refugee claimants.
Our refugee website provides you with more information resources about our work. The web address is www.refugees.freeservers.com. I want to begin my remarks on the issue of detention with a brief overview of our work.
VACC has worked with refugees and refugee claimants since 1993 when 200 refused Chinese refugee claimants living in Vancouver sought our assistance. These individuals arrived in Canada in the aftermath of the 1989 Beijing Massacre. By 1993, their claims had been refused, they were deportable, and the immigration department wanted to deport these people and others in their situation.
NGOs including VACC, CCNC, the CCR and faith groups urged the government to consider a humanitarian and compassionate option. We reminded the federal government of the foreign policy implications of returning people to a country that clearly abused human rights and to a country where people may not be safe. In the end, the federal government decided to land these and others by creating a new immigration class. This was known as DROC: Deferred Removals Orders Class. It allowed people with refused refugee status and 3 years residency in Canada, post the negative decision, and with no criminal record, there were a couple other criteria, to stay in Canada. In all about 5000 people from all nations were granted landed status under that program.
My point is that in this particular case while it was clearly "legal" to deport these people, we instead took the legal public policy decision to land these people.
It was different in 1914 when we detained then rejected the people aboard the Komagata Maru. In 1939 Canada refused the Jews aboard the St. Louis. We should have accepted these people. A generation ago, the Chinese community lobbied for a compassionate resolution and status for the Chinese paper sons and succeeded. But apparently we are still learning from these decisions.
In 1999, more than 28000 people from all countries made spontaneous refugee claims at our ports of entry. In all, about 43% of the claims finalized last year at the Immigration and Refugee Board were accepted. Over 3600 claims were logged as abandoned and 2000 claims withdrawn last year.
We are one of the lead organizations advocating for the Chinese boat refugees and refugee claimants. VACC is the sponsor of the SOS-Chinese Settlement project. A total of 590 Chinese and 9 Koreans arrived aboard 4 ships last year, 25 more arrived inside a shipping container aboard a freighter in January of this year. Almost everyone of them made a spontaneous refugee claim.
The public response was immediate and largely driven by media pictures. It took about ten days before we learned that these people aboard the first ship wanted to make a refugee claim. But in the court of public opinion, unburdened by facts, these people were illegal immigrants, bogus refugees, they were economic migrants trying to sneak into the country. An immigration manager suggested that "criminals" were aboard. An RCMP official stated that none were refugees. The Reform Party wanted an immediate recall of Parliament, they wanted immediate deportation, then they changed their mind, proposed a quick process, advocated mass detention and at the same time criticized the cost of detention.
But these people made refugee claims when they were interviewed. They are therefore legally entitled to a hearing and they have the same Charter rights as the other 27000 refugee claimants who arrived last year.
VACC's position from the beginning has been that the boat refugees and indeed any person seeking sanctuary at our borders is entitled to a full fair and impartial hearing. It is our position that all refugee claimants have Charter rights, and certainly the practice of detention in our view is an extraordinary measure.
The fact is that we do not normally detain refugee claimants. Only a handful of people arriving by air are detained for various reasons. But the overwhelming majority of refugee claimants, some 28000 last year, most arriving without ID documents, many arriving with the aid of third parties, many arriving with the aid of smugglers and traffickers, many who are not Convention refugees, many who will eventually abandon their claims (more than 5000 last year), are granted entry. They are processed and referred to the IRB, they are issued IMM documents, and they are not detained.
The government chose to detain over 400 adults aboard ships 2,3,4, and the container and 37 adults aboard ship 1. Today about 250 adults remain detained in Canadian jails. The minors were placed in the care of the provincial Ministry of Children's and Families, some were placed in youth detention.
To date at least 14 Convention refugee claims have been accepted. Over 350 claims have been refused, some 2 dozen cases are under appeal. About 113 people including 4 minors have been deported.
VACC is against group and continuous detention. These people have been treated like criminals. The Chinese boat refugees have been incarcerated for more than 10 months now. This is an extraordinary penalty for the crime of seeking entry to Canada.
The impact has been very harmful to those who have been detained. They live under under prison rules. There exists no specific policy manual regarding their custody arrangements. There are significant mental health pressures. There has been a hunger strike and at least three attempted suicides. Their access to their lawyers and to advocates are limited and therefore they are disadvantaged ahead of their refugee hearing. The immigration officials pressure them to sign travel documents.
All agencies involved in their incarceration will acknowledge that they are not criminals, but they are treated that way. They are given no advance notice of their deportation. Our colleagues at DARE (Direct Action Against Refugee Exploitation) have called for an independent inquiry to investigate the effects of detention. The CCR moved a similar resolution last December and we support this.
The Canadian government response has been a reactionary enforcement response. Detain, accelerated hearing, deportation. I expect that the new immigration legislation and regulations will give immigration officials wide detention powers. And these draconian powers are dangerous. If passed it is conceivable that more groups of people will be detained by the immigration department on a continuous basis and the decision to detain will be driven by political objectives.
In our view the detention of the Chinese boat refugees is immoral, it is illegal, it is unconstitutional and it is a misuse of public resources. This enforcement response mirrors the Australian approach where some 3000 people currently languish in detention camps there.
Detention is not a deterrent, at best the smugglers will move the ships elsewhere, more likely they will use more clandestine methods and use air travel. Those repatriated will likely be retrafficked.
Detention prejudices their refugee claim. The IRB members are not immune from public debate. Add to this the fact that the Vancouver IRB office has the lowest acceptance rate of refugee claims. In 1999, IRB Vancouver accepted 9.9% of Chinese claims (factoring out the boat refugees); the Toronto IRB office accepted 59%. This systemic bias is still unexplained. The Legal Services Society contracts out the legal representation at a case when the normal tariff is closer to . And soon we realize the fix is in.
What should be our response? Well there are many factors affecting this migration. Certainly there are the human rights abuses in China. And overall 37% of Chinese claims are accepted in Canada. So there are Convention refugees arriving from China.
Some of these people are victims of trafficking. Some are escaping poverty and the impact of globalization. There is of course the pull of gold mountain and overseas relatives and friends beckoning. And Fujian migration has a global sojourning history.
There are no easy answers to all of the factors affecting this migration except that we need to look at constructive alternatives. The reactionary enforcement response does not solve human trafficking. Maybe the ships won't land here but they may land elsewhere or the mode of transport may become more clandestine and more dangerous.
We need to recognize that people seeking sanctuary be given a full, fair and impartial hearing. We need to ensure that victims of trafficking are protected from their oppressors including providing for temporary status. We need a foreign policy response to countries with documented human rights abuses. We need to recognize the impact of globalization and the fact that our own excessive consumption creates these conditions. We need more responsive immigration policy instruments that are more welcoming and recognize that our immigration selection criteria excludes about 95% of humanity.
We need an alternative to the spontaneous refugee application process as the only door of entry for people who may not qualify otherwise. This process underscores the classist, elitist, and racist nature of our immigration policy – if the people aboard the fours ships were British, French, Hong Kong residents, or South Koreans, they would likely be granted entry into Canada because they enjoy visa free right of abode. But for Chinese or South Asian people, they require a visa, so their only legal option in the absence of a valid visa is to make a spontaneous refugee claim. So on the one hand, there is an open door right of abode policy for some peoples, and a door basically slammed shut for others.
In closing, VACC opposes group and continuous detention. We are working on some legal strategies to oppose the use of group and continuous detention. We would be very interested in hearing from delegates interested in this area.
Thank you.
Victor Yukmun Wong
Executive Director
Vancouver Association of Chinese Canadians
