Not wanted on the voyage

David Poopalapillai is angry. On Oct. 21 the Conservative government introduced Bill C-49, the Act Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System. The spokesperson for the Canadian Tamil Congress speaks quickly and cuttingly about what it will mean for some refugees.

“Do we expect a woman who was raped or facing persecution to go to an embassy, submit an application, wait there for three years and expect her to be raped by whoever in that time then come to Canada?” he asks, his accent thickening.

Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews introduced the bill after two boatloads of Tamil asylum seekers arrived from Sri Lanka via Thailand over the past 12 months. He stood in front of the Ocean Lady, one of the two ships, on a dock in B.C. flanked by Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and Regional Minister Stockwell Day, when he made the announcement.

A new bill in Parliament to shut out human smugging may make things more difficult for refugees seeking asylum.

“We are providing a strong deterrent for those who are considering using human smuggling operations to jump the queue into Canada,” Toews said.  “We are ensuring the integrity and fairness of Canada's immigration system for years to come.”

But human rights advocates say the bill threatens the safety of refugees here and abroad.

“Despite the title, most of the provisions in the bill punish refugees, not smugglers. The people who will suffer if this bill is passed are people fleeing persecution, including children,” said the Canadian Council for Refugees in a statement.

The most contentious elements of the bill are provisions that allow the minister of public safety to declare a “smuggling incident” which would then permit:

• Detaining anyone suspected of entering the country with the help of human smugglers for up to one year, without trial, until his or her identity is confirmed. This includes children;
• Preventing approved refugees from applying for permanent citizenship for five years;
• Disallowing refugees from sponsoring family members for resettlement in Canada; and
• Revoking refugee status if refugees go back to their home countries or travel outside Canada.

Queue jumping

In international law the first country an asylum seeker arrives in after leaving home is where he or she must seek refuge. The two Tamil boats stopped in Thailand before arriving in B.C.

“Bill C-49 sends the message it is unfair to those seeking to come to Canada through legitimate, legal means when others pay human smugglers to help jump our immigration queue,” says David Charbonneau, a spokesperson for Public Safety Canada. He added that the law is meant to send a clear message to smugglers.

Poopalapillai disagrees. “There is no queue jumping for refugees. The queue starts right in Canada."

Given that Canada is surrounded by water and has a less accessible neighbour to the south, refugees coming to Canada often have to find creative ways of getting here. Academics and advocates say the new law penalizes refugees for that and does little to address the issue of human smuggling.

The MV Sun Sea bearing Tamil refugees arrives in B.C.

Canada offers resettlement through the UN High Commission for Refugees. Asylum seekers wait in camps or in a third country to be accepted into Canada as landed immigrant

About 33,000 refugees claim asylum in Canada each year. In 2009, 12,000 of the 22,000 accepted refugees arrived through government and private sponsorships. Combined, the number of people aboard the two Tamil ships is less than the number of refugees that arrive in Canada any given week.

“Essentially what the government is trying to do is draw up the drawbridge and sharpen swords and make it less palatable or less enjoyable to be a refugee,” says James Milner, an expert in international refugee issues at Carleton University. Instead, he says, “It’s a punitive act against individuals who are claiming asylum.”

He says diminished access can convince refugees to rely on the expertise of smugglers and has the potential to make trafficking humans more lucrative than trafficking narcotics.

Political grandstanding?

Milner questions the government’s intentions, given the timing of the bill and what he describes as its inability to curtail human smuggling.

“The fact that this new bill has been introduced so soon after the successful negotiation of Bill C-11 smacks of political opportunism,” he says. Bill C-11 was a complete overhaul of asylum laws in Canada and was passed earlier this year with the assent of opposition parties. 

It’s a diversion, it’s a political gimmick, nothing else, nothing more. — David PoopalapillaiPoopalapillai says the government is using C-49 to divert attention away from a series of recent challenges, including the loss of its bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council. “It’s a diversion, it’s a political gimmick, nothing else, nothing more,” he says.

According to Milner, popular opinion was quick to see the Tamil arrivals as the queue jumpers the Conservative government portrayed them as.

“What we have seen is the significant public erosion of sympathy and solidarity [for refugees]” he says.

Targeting refugees

Charbonneau says that with the bill “Canada is taking action to stop abuse of our generosity by bolstering Canada's ability to revoke the ‘protected person’ status of immigration fraudsters who arrive as part of a human smuggling operation."

Gary Anandasangaree, a Toronto lawyer and legal counsel for the Canadian Tamil Congress, says the government has completely failed to acknowledge potential legitimate refugee claims; instead it will view claims through the prism of human smuggling. He says the issues of human smuggling and asylum should be separate.

Anandasangaree says that the law also creates a two-tiered model for considering refugees — those who are irregulars with limited rights and those who come to the country through government sponsored resettlement programs.

Janet Dench with the Canadian Council for Refugees says that violates basic principles of fairness and that the law, if passed, would allow the government to deprive one group of refugees of their rights.

“This is an extremely anti-refugee bill,” she says.

“These are people who are seeking protection against persecution and mass human rights violations,” Milner says. “The fundamental desire of the human spirit to survive will lead them to continue to try and find a solution. Restrictive policies just drive them further underground as opposed to prevent their arrival at all.”

Finding home

Canada accepts 22,000 refugees every year. This is the story of one.

Khaled Abu-Nasar has been a refugee all his life — from persecution in Kuwait, hiding from danger in Iraq, and four years in a refugee camp in Syria. Coming to Canada through the resettlement program, he said, was like being born again.