Seeking a better life. (Immigration--Refugees).

This is a very tricky issue. True refugees are defined by the 1951 United Nations Convention, to which Canada adheres. They are individuals fleeing because of a well-founded fear of persecution. Today, people also flee in large groups, and they're escaping violence as well as persecution.

If a refugee claimant can prove that she or he fits the UN definition, the door is flung open and they are welcomed. They are housed, fed, clothed, and given legal aid at public expense. They are entitled to the rights and benefits of a Canadian citizen, including court appeals. The initial hearing to establish refugee status usually takes about a year, and appeals can add several more years before a case is decided.

But, it isn't easy for people to prove they are legitimate refugees; people often leave their country of origin with little more than the clothes on their backs and few papers. Official records often are destroyed by turmoil in their homelands. As refugee activist Andrew Brouwer puts it, "It's a fact of life that many genuine refugees simply are unable to secure identity documents that meet Canadian standards. To save their own lives, some have no choice but to resort to false documents or irregular means of travel to escape.

"This is as true today as half a century ago when those who drafted the UN Convention on the Status of Refugees put in a clause explicitly prohibiting countries from imposing penalties on refugees who enter a country, illegally (Article 31) ..."

The refugee process is cumbersome, and it needs to be. That's because so many people have abused the system in the past that well-policed regulations are essential to try to uncover the fakes. People who are not eligible to make a refugee claim include criminals, people who are deemed dangerous, those who have just had a refugee claim rejected but immediately come back for another try, and people who received refugee status but then are judged a danger.

Some people criticize our asylum system as inadequate and overly generous, with thousands of undocumented people entering Canada every year. As the former head of the' Canadian Immigration Service (1985-1990), James Bissett should know what he's talking about. He says most of the phony refugee claimants "are smuggled in by international criminal gangs that provide them with false documents enabling them to board the aircraft bringing them to Canada. A representative of the trafficker picks up these documents to be recycled and sold again."

In an article in The Globe and Mail in October 2001, Mr. Bissett added that, "People willingly pay thousands of dollars to be smuggled into Canada because smugglers can give them an almost iron-clad guarantee that once on Canadian soil it is unlikely they will ever be removed. Severe penalties against traffickers do little good since they are rarely apprehended."

And, he adds that the approval rate by the refugee board in Canada is the highest in the world at close to 60%. In European countries the approval rate is between 10% and 12%, which, along with Australia, Mr. Bissett says have better screening systems.

But, while some people feel there needs to be some tightening up, others say the current system under which all refugee claimants are given a hearing, must be maintained, to avoid sending a person with a genuine claim back to his or her home country. The system is set up to ensure that no one is sent back to persecution, and supporters say the price to pay may be that some illegitimate refugees are allowed into Canada.

Nevertheless, those boatloads of Chinese nationals who arrived in Canada during the summer of 1999 were greeted with hostility by the Chinese-Canadian community as well as the population in general on our Western shores. All of the first lot of 123 boat people made refugee claims, along with many of the 131 who arrived in a second boat a few weeks later. In all, four boats appeared carrying 599 poverty-stricken migrants from China. British Columbians were not sympathetic, and few believed the illegal immigrants were genuine refugees. After all, they broke the rules to get here, and their claims and care cost Canadian taxpayers millions of dollars. The general verdict was that they should go home. And, some of the harshest critics were from the Chinese-Canadian community. They hurled insults at refugee claimants as they toured Vancouver's Chinatown with community volunteers. Those who arrived in Canada legally were angry and resentful toward those trying to sneak in through the back door. They wanted nothing to do with the illegal arrivals to the point that few even were willing to donate clothing and blankets to them. Canada did not reject the shiploads of Chinese immediately, but Ottawa did detain them and made clear that future ships would be unwelcome. In the end, most of them were sent back home.

At the time, government officials said it is a myth that Canada does not work to keep economic migrants from masquerading as legitimate refugees. In fact, they reported that, the year before, the government intercepted 6,300 people at foreign airports who did not have appropriate credentials for entry into Canada, up almost 100% from 1994, when 3,690 individuals were caught.

The migrants found off the coast of B.C. were described by one government official as a "small drop in the bucket" compared with the large number of claimants who come in on airplanes and at U.S.-Canadian border crossings. About 25,000 refugee claimants a year make their cases on Canadian soil, while about 7,000 others make claims in foreign countries. Almost half are legitimate.

SUGGESTED ACTIVITIES:

1. While Canada had to deal with four boatloads of Chinese migrants one summer, Australia gets boats every week full of migrants seeking ASYLUM. In August 2001, hundreds of Afghan refugees were stranded on a ship off Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean, 1,400 kilometres northwest of Australia. They were on a Norwegian freighter, which picked them up at Australia's request after the migrants nearly drowned when the leaky wooden ship carrying them sank. Norway said the sick and desperate asylum-seekers were Australia's responsibility. While Australia sent troops, food, and doctors to help the boat people, it was against taking them in.

Australia accepts thousands of refugees every year through the United Nations, but asylum-seekers who arrive by sea are housed in detention camps, often for years.

Between 1999 and 2001, more than 9,000 illegal migrants arrived in the country from southwest Asia, mostly from Afghanistan and Iraq. In August alone there were more than 1,500 arrivals. Even the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva said it was hard to pinpoint responsibility in the case of the refugees stuck on the Norwegian ship. Research the incident and find out how it was resolved.

2. As Marcus Gee says in his column in The Globe and Mail, "Every Western country, Canada included, is struggling with the question of what to do with waves of migrants who arrive claiming refugee status. Western Europe gets about half a million asylum seekers a year from Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and just about every other corner of the developing world ...

"... In a world where the gap between rich and poor is so huge, there will always be wretched people knocking at our doors ..." Discuss ways in which you think this problem could be alleviated.

Critics of the refugee system have called
for increased detention of refugees, saying
that migrant-smugglers might be dissuaded
if Canada speeds up the process
of refugee hearings and detains individuals
until such hearings can be held. But
speeding up the process mould require
more immigration officers, whose numbers
were culled to help eliminate the
deficit. Refugee advocates are concerned
that detaining more claimants could result
in people who are legitimately fleeing
persecution being too easily detained. At
right, refugees arrive of Malaysia.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

FACT FILE

Forty years ago, the richest fifth of the world's population possessed about 30 times more wealth than the poorest 20%. Today, that factor has tripled to 90 times more wealth.

In the first nine months of 2000, 1,045 Hungarian refugee claimants' cases were referred to the Immigration and Refugee Board; about 16% were determined to be genuine refugees.

It's been estimated that half the world's population lives on $2 a day or less.

A new rule in December 2000 allows undocumented refugees to qualify for landed-immigrant status if they can provide sworn affidavits from people who can confirm their identity. Without that status people cannot sponsor other family members from refugee camps, get government jobs, or loans.

A refugee claimant who is processed at an airport and released may apply for public health coverage and welfare, and children may attend school until a decision is made; the process usually takes many months, if not years.

WHO DECIDES?

The members of the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), who are politically appointed, decide which refugee claimants may stay in Canada and which may not. You might think that board members have backgrounds in international law or refugee issues, but that's not necessarily so. Political appointees pose a problem when the jobs are handed out to faithful party workers who are not always qualified for the job.

There are some lawyers on the board but the 180 members also include a former land surveyor, an education consultant, and an engineer.

Anyone can apply to the Board, as long as he or she has five years of any sort of professional work experience, a university degree, and what the government describes as "communications skills." As a former senior member of the board put it, "the appointments to the IRB are based primarily on political considerations rather than considerations of good government."

Critics say appointments should be made by an arm's-length process that is removed from politicians.

MORE TO COME

Many people feel it's up to those of us fortunate enough to live comfortably in the Western world to help out victims of the misery in the rest of the world, Refugee and human-rights activists say if not legitimate refugees, they nevertheless are poor, desperate people looking for a better life in a new country.

Most European countries have toughened up their immigration laws to make it harder for illegitimate refugees to claim asylum. More than half a million found their way into Western Europe in 2000, fleeing poverty, political oppression, or environmental destruction in their own countries.

In 2000, Canada received almost 30,000 refugees, according to Immigration Canada, More than 41,377 people sought asylum in the United States in 1999, but undocumented newcomers (mostly from Mexico) are believed to number about 300,000 a year.

According to the U.S. Committee for Refugees, at the end of 2000, there were 14.5 million refugees or asylum-seekers in various parts of the world. Slightly more than half were either Palestinian or Afghan. The rest were from Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

But, some experts say this is only the beginning, that as the gulf widens between the world's few very rich nations and its many impoverished ones, there will be more and more illegal migration.

Websites

Canadian Council for
Refugees--http://www.web.
net/~ccr/

Centre for Refugee Studies--http:
//www.yorku.ca/crs/

Immigration and
Refugee Board--http://
www.irb.gc.ca/

Settlement.org (Ontario)--http:
//www.settlement.org