Canadians Begin to Say No to Immigrants From China : Society: A recent string of smuggling ships is testing the nation’s reputation as welcome mat to the world.

The 190 illegal Chinese immigrants who motored into this stretch of wilderness last week in a rusted, dented floating jalopy didn’t exactly receive a royal Canadian welcome.

The immigrants, secretly shoehorned under the deck of an old fishing trawler for 35 days, were stopped by Canadian authorities near this logging town nestled between towering cedar forests and deep, clear lakes.

Hit by the recent closure of the town’s main employer, the Bowater Pulp Mill, and the loss of half the town’s jobs, the crowd on Gold River’s docks was in no mood to watch government officials help illegal immigrants ashore. Many locals glowered at the newcomers. Nobody waved.

“You’re darn tootin’ we’re mad about this,” said Dayle Crawford, Gold River’s mayor. “The government’s now going to take care of these people, when we’re the ones who need help.”

This was the second time in six weeks that smuggled immigrants from China trudged across the pier at Gold River, 150 miles northwest of Vancouver, and it was among four major incidents of people-smuggling uncovered on the west coast of Canada this summer. On Friday, authorities intercepted the latest boatload of illegal Chinese immigrants and brought them to a reception center near Vancouver.

Canada absorbs 225,000 legal immigrants a year, more in proportion to its population than any other Western country. But the recent string of smuggling ships--combined with a rising chorus that the government should not have let the immigrants in--is testing Canada’s reputation as welcome mat to the world.

Newspaper headlines blare “Go Home” and “Enough Already.” Leaders of Vancouver’s large Chinese Canadian community, unmoved by the immigrants’ horror stories of being crammed under the deck for days and living off a runny gruel of water and rice, insist that they should be deported. And Canadian immigration authorities are scrambling to swiftly process the new arrivals, ditching liberal traditions for policies that mimic more stringent U.S. procedures.

Many of this summer’s illegal immigrants planned to use the Canadian coast as the first step in a long underground journey to the U.S., authorities said.

According to information gathered by Canadian detectives, immigrants aboard the four boats paid about $35,000 each to be transported secretly across the Pacific Ocean and then onward through Canada via safe houses. At Lake Ontario or other points along the porous U.S.-Canadian border, many of the immigrants were to be smuggled into the U.S., said Jim Fisher, an organized-crime investigator with Canada’s criminal intelligence service.

Many Asylum Seekers Reappear in U.S.

The leaders of the smuggling rings, called “snakeheads” after the way they make people curl up like snakes under the deck, coach their cargo in how to apply for political asylum upon arriving in Canada. One out of five asylum seekers vanishes before a hearing, with most resurfacing in the U.S., authorities said. Many work for years as indentured servants in New York sweatshops to pay back their smuggling debts.

“This is a well-organized criminal network running from Vancouver Island all the way to New York City,” Fisher said. “These guys know they’re going to get a better reception in Canada than the U.S., so that’s where they start.”

Until the second and third boats arrived this summer, Canadian authorities typically did not detain asylum seekers, the standard practice in the United States. The Canadian government also gives asylum seekers work permits, welfare and health insurance--things they wouldn’t see south of the border.

When the time comes to decide whether an asylum seeker is indeed a persecuted individual in his or her homeland, chances for asylum are substantially higher in Canada than in the United States. Last year, 12,884 of the 23,838 asylum seekers in Canada, or 54%, were granted asylum, compared with about 20,000 of the 57,786 U.S. applicants, or 35%, according to Canadian and U.S. sources.

But thanks to the negative publicity about their arrival and Canada’s shifting attitudes toward immigration, asylum is hardly a sure thing for the more than 600 Chinese illegal immigrants who have arrived this summer.

Already, one 16-year-old boy, claiming that he was persecuted as a Christian, had his asylum claim rejected because immigration officials didn’t believe him. At a hearing last week, officials asked the boy the identity of the central figure of Christianity.

“Mr. Lee--who is in charge of the prayer meetings,” the boy answered, according to his lawyer.

Immigration officials have decided to deport him.

The boy was among the 123 immigrants on the first dilapidated fishing boat spotted by a Canadian military jet near Gold River. The July 20 discovery brought its hellish monthlong voyage to an end.

“We didn’t see the sun for 30 days,” said a 24-year-old smuggled passenger who declined to give his name.

The second boatload was the most ill-fated. After a 60-day trip through rough seas, the trawler was intercepted Aug. 11 near the remote Queen Charlotte Islands. But before the Canadian Coast Guard could reach the ship, its captain dumped the 140 passengers on a rocky beach, where they were soon captured.

One man was stranded on a nearby island, and authorities assume that he either starved to death or was mauled by bears. An elderly woman died during the voyage, and her body was tossed into the sea, officials later learned.

The third boat, also spotted by a military plane off Vancouver Island, was towed to Gold River on Aug. 31. The fourth boat, which was boarded Friday morning, was intercepted 18 miles west of Vancouver Island near Nootka Sound. It had about 150 immigrants on board.

Canadians are evenly split about what to do with the immigrants, according to national opinion polls conducted last week. Darrel Stinson, a Conservative member of Parliament, is pushing the government to deport them immediately.

“If we don’t, Canada will become a dumping ground for international people-smuggling,” Stinson said.

History professor Irving Abella of York University in Toronto wants the migrants to stay. They are young and hardy, aggressive and courageous, he said.

“We should welcome these people because they are exactly the type of citizens we want,” Abella said.

While many Canadians say they resent the immigrants for the $5 million in estimated tax dollars spent on them, the roots of the outrage may go deeper than that, Abella said. Canada is getting more diverse each day, and some people are fed up with multiculturalism. And Canadians are “orderly people,” he said. The national psyche eschews anyone flouting the rules--like showing up illegally at the border.

That seems to be a strong current among the Chinese Canadians who make up 16% of Greater Vancouver’s population.

“For those of us who have followed the proper route, letting these boat people in seems unfair,” said Derick Y. H. Cheng, chairman of Vancouver’s Chinese Cultural Center. “We had to go through all the background checks, the waiting and the citizenship tests. Now these people come over with no skills, and they get to become instant Canadians?

“I guess that’s the price we pay for being a free democracy,” Cheng added.

Though the government has detained all the adults from the second, third and fourth boats in response to public criticism, 71 immigrants from the first boat have been released pending their asylum hearings and are getting their first taste of democracy.

Canadians ‘Free Not to Like Us,’ Migrant Says

One afternoon last week, a small group gathered at a social service agency in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Most were young men with curious smiles who looked eager to talk to outsiders, if only they knew more than just “hello.” With shirts pressed, hair combed straight and their government-bought New Balance sneakers neatly laced, many of the young men exuded a Boy Scout-like sense of tidiness.

One 20-year-old said he had been hoping for a smoother welcome.

“But Canada is a free country,” the man said through a translator. “And people here are free not to like us.”

Andrew Van Velzen of The Times’ Toronto Bureau contributed to this report.