Canada’s Immigration Minister has signalled that he intends to play hardball with 76 men believed to be from Sri Lanka who arrived on a rusty boat off Canada’s West Coast, as the government battles the perception of Canada as a soft touch for asylum seekers.
While Tamil Canadians have urged Canadian officials to show compassion, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney told The Globe and Mail yesterday that that the migrants’ illegal arrival highlights the growing problem of human smuggling.
The Conservative government has said it believes many refugee claims are bogus and has promised tougher legislation.
“We don’t want to develop a reputation of having a two-tier immigration system – one tier for legal, law-abiding immigrants who patiently wait to come to the country, and a second tier who seek to come through the back door, typically through the asylum system,” Mr. Kenney said in an interview.
“We need to do a much better job of shutting the back door of immigration for those who seek to abuse that asylum system.”
The plight of the men, who are expected to make refugee claims, will likely move to an Immigration and Refugee Board hearing room Tuesday.
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Mr. Kenny, I hope this a promise the CPC will keep.
Looks like a lot of very young people in the photo. Where and how did they get the money for the 45,000. for the fare. If that country is so poor, that amount of money would make them very rich. Doesn’t pass the smell test. Multiply that amount by 76 and somebody made a lot of money.
Add that to the ship trying to get to Australia.
I hope they are all returned, to where ever they come from. Or else we will see a huge increase in these ships.
Taking a hard line should mean providing that ship with necessities of life such as fuel, food and water and turning them right around and escorting them out of Canadian waters making sure they never come back. The reality? Probably once all the hoopala dies down an inordinate percentage will be permitted to stay as refugees, and in 3 years they’ll be elgible to become full fledged citizens. It’s just that easy and the rest of the world knows it.
How much is a plane ticket from where ever they embarked from to Canada. If these illegals were such upstandanding citizens, why didn’t they take a plane. And why didn’t the smugglers just buy them a ticket and pocket the rest of the money. It appears they now have legal councel, but who is paying for it. Sleeper cells in waiting.
There won’t be any hardline followed by Harper’s government. After all, he wants the Tamil vote and there are lots of other immigrant communities that the government is courting. Beentheredonethat assessment is likely to be proven correct.
The immigration department set the precedent with the boat people in 1999…
Werent the Tamil Tigers just defeated completely? What are they refugees from? Bad government?
Anyone want to take a bet on how many of these “refugees” ARE Tamil Tigers?