No Canadian Welcome Mat for Draft Dodgers : Evasion: The neighbor up north has changed its laws. But peace groups are getting many U.S. inquiries.

Peace groups, refugee lawyers in Canada and some Canadian consulates in the United States say they are receiving queries from draft-age American men who fear a reinstatement of conscription and who say they will flee north of the border if it comes.

But Canada has changed substantially since the days of the Vietnam War, when it provided a haven to tens of thousands of American draft dodgers. Experts advise draft-age men and U.S. reservists who oppose combat to think twice before assuming that they will be welcome in Canada.

“Their legal situation in Canada is more favorable than it was in the 1960s and 1970s. But their political situation is more difficult,” said Lorne Waldman, a Canadian immigration lawyer. Waldman has already counseled one American deserter who fled to Toronto in the wake of Operation Desert Shield before the Persian Gulf War began.

Canada used to be the haven of choice for American draft resisters because of its proximity, its English language and because the government allowed Americans to cross the border freely, apply for “landed immigrant” status and stay on while they waited for their papers to be processed.

Then in 1972, Canada stopped letting would-be immigrants submit their papers from inside the country. Today, applicants must apply from their home countries and await the results there. The change means that if the Gulf War becomes open-ended and a draft is resumed, unwilling young Americans will have to sit at home under unsympathetic eyes and wait for Canada to decide on their applications.

That’s the bad news. The good news, according to Waldman, is that the government here set up procedures in 1978 enabling would-be immigrants to proclaim themselves refugees, receive special hearings and, if their claims are denied, to appeal the decisions. The process can take months, and Canada allows refugee claimants to enjoy the country’s many social welfare benefits while their cases grind along through the immigration system.

To achieve official “refugee” status, a claimant has to prove he has a well-founded fear of persecution in his home country.

“Can you argue that prosecution (for deserting the U.S. Army) constitutes persecution? That’s the argument that will be addressed in these cases,” Waldman said.

The idea may sound outlandish to some, but Waldman insists that a good Canadian immigration lawyer could make strong arguments to that effect. Waldman has represented Iranians and Ethiopians who deserted from their respective national armies, fled to Canada and declared themselves refugees. Those claims proved successful.

The trick now, Waldman said, would be convincing Canadian immigration judges that prosecution for desertion in America would be as unjust and dangerous a proposition as it is in Iran. That, of course, won’t be easy. Americans who have come to Canada and claimed refugee status in the past have seldom been taken seriously.

The claimant who came closest to succeeding was Robert Satiacum, an American Indian activist who was convicted of racketeering and jailed in 1982, then escaped to Canada. When he argued that he was a refugee because he couldn’t get a fair trial in America, a lower court agreed. But the Canadian government appealed and Satiacum eventually lost.

Refugee claims aside, there are a few other legal ways to enter Canada, but those aren’t particularly easy. The most straightforward way to enter is to be sponsored by a close relative already living here: a fiance, spouse or parent. Another relatively sure-fire way to come to Canada today is to go into business here. Few frightened draft-age men could expect to qualify as budding businessmen, since the Canadian government requires the prospective entrepreneur to have a personal net worth of $425,000 and to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in the new business. He or she must also demonstrate solid experience in the chosen field.

A less certain way of gaining legal entry to live in Canada is to take a suitability test, in which points are awarded for such matters as English or French-language skills, education and vocational training. A score of 70 out of 100 is considered a “pass.” Large numbers of points are awarded to applicants with experience in vocations where Canada has labor shortages.

At the moment, Canada is awarding the most points to health administrators, social workers, certain medical technicians, firefighters, undertakers, pipeline operators, electrical linemen, metalworkers and papermakers. The list is updated every eight months or so.

As for the politics of coming to Canada, Waldman and others point out that Americans are much less likely to find sympathy here than they were a generation ago. In those days, Canada was peaceful and had no part in the Vietnam War. Today’s Canada has a conservative government whose economic and foreign policies track closely with those of Washington. After Iraq invaded Kuwait last August, Canada sent about 1,800 aviators and sailors to the Persian Gulf. The pilots are participating directly in combat missions.

“I wonder how Canadians would feel about harboring draft dodgers from the States now,” said Ellen Chenaux, an American who edits a fashion magazine in Toronto. She has been getting calls from her old friends in the United States, asking whether she could put up their sons if a draft were resumed. Chenaux, whose husband was drafted and served four years in Vietnam, said she has overwhelming feelings of deja vu these days.

At the Central Committee for Conscientious Objection in Philadelphia, military counselor David Stoler said that hundreds of phone calls are coming in each day from draft-aged men and their Vietnam-era mothers. Many of the callers say they will go to Canada if a draft starts.

Stoler and his colleagues have been telling the callers to consider other options, such as official conscientious objector status, medical deferments or family financial hardship pleas. He also reminds them that if the seemingly unthinkable happens, and there is a new draft, it may be operated on the old lottery system and some men inevitably will be saved by good numbers.

Unfortunately, Stoler said, few of the callers pay him any heed.

“I try to tell them the Canadians were not happy with the influx of Americans they got in the Vietnam era,” he said. “But they still say, ‘Well, I’ll just get on a plane to Montreal and land at the Montreal airport--and what’s the problem?’ ”