Here They Come

So, the first one is here and I reckon, many more will follow before we know. A couple of weeks ago, the rusty boat loaded with 490 illegal immigrants from Sri Lanka docked at the Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt. To be accurate, it's not the first migrant smuggling ship that arrived at the coast of Canada; a number of them have got here the same way sporadically in the past. The significance of this one is, as the Public Safety Minister Vic Toews admitted, the MV Sun Sea should be considered a “test boat” to probe Canada’s receptiveness to ship-borne refugee claims – part of a wider human smuggling operation with designs on sending more illegals here.

Not to long ago, I got engaged in a discussion on a subject of US and Canadian immigration problems. My friend suggested, that unlike in the United States, there are virtually no illegal immigrants on this side of border, claiming the Canadian immigration agency IRB has situation firmly under the control. To support her assertion, she said, that everyone enters the country with the valid travel documents and the incomer's identity is thoroughly examined by the Canadian border and immigration services. Unfortunately, this inconclusive presumption might only apply for us - the naive, law-obeying immigrants, who had followed the required regulations and patiently waited for months, some of us even the years to be legally admitted to Canada. But it is quite different story for the host of the others, who for one or another reason choose to jump the queue or to bypass the legal immigration requirements altogether. And make no mistake, those people are well familiar with all the tricks in the book. Needless to say, they know the first and the most important one: once a person arrives to Canada, either by the land, the sea or the air and applies for the refugee status, under the Canadian law he/she cannot be turned down. Whether they present valid travel documents, some other type of ID, or none at all is not an issue at this stage. Therefore, those who have no desire to reveal their true identity simply destroy their documents prior arrival and fabricate some heartbreaking tale about fleeing persecution and seeking asylum. After a few days or weeks in detention, they're free to go and while awaiting their case to be decided by the immigration agency (which might take as long as 15 years), they are entitled to receive a full government financial assistance and social benefits. And of course, as you might have guessed by know, many of those newcomers (perhaps the hard core criminals or members of various terrorist groups) will fall off the radar and their whereabouts are unknown. There is no credible information available on illegal immigration in Canada but a 2008 report by the Auditor General Sheila Fraser stated that Canada has lost track of as many as 41,000 illegal immigrants. The actual number is probably at least three times higher - according to some estimates up to 120,000 "lost souls". A former head of the Canadian Immigration Service James Bissett sees the problem roots in the lack of any credible refugee screening process, combined with a high likelihood of ignoring any deportation orders, which results in tens of thousands of outstanding warrants for the arrest of rejected refugee claimants, with little attempt at enforcement. Unlike in the U.S., refugee claimants in Canada do not have to attempt re-entry to learn the status of their claim. Bisset also suggested that the number of illegal immigrants will increase drastically with the expiration of previously issued temporary employer work permits, which won't be renewed in many cases because of the shortage of work due to the recession.

You can draw your own conclusions from the above, but in my opinion we can only hope "God will keep our land glorious and free", but sorry, Oh Canada, we certainly don't stand on guard for thee.

Milo.