Canada: Freedom of Movement within the Country, Foreign Travel, Emigration, and Repatriation

Canada

Country Reports on Human Rights Practices

Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

2000

February 23, 2001

Freedom of Movement within the Country, Foreign Travel, Emigration, and Repatriation

The law provides for these rights, and the Government respects them in practice.

The law provides for the granting of asylum and refugee status in accordance with the standards of the 1951 U.N. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol. The Government cooperates with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and other humanitarian organizations in assisting refugees and extends first asylum. Canada is a resettlement country, and the Government projected approving between

36,600 and 40,800 claims for refugee status during the year.

During the summer of 1999, 599 Chinese arrived illegally by boat off the coast of British Columbia and sought refugee status. Because the majority of the early refugee claimants who were released failed to appear for their hearings, a much larger percentage of refugee claimants from subsequent boats were remanded into custody pending their refugee hearings. A total of 586 persons made refugee claims. The Government has granted refugee status to 25 migrants and has denied 458 claims. Of these, 330 have been returned to China. Other claims were abandoned or withdrawn. A total of 43 adults remained in custody at year's end. A total of 115 children were placed in the care of the Ministry of Children and Families.

There was no information publicly available on the results of a formal inquiry into a Chinese refugee's claims that prison officers had beaten him in December 1999.

There were no reports of the forced expulsion of persons to a country where they feared persecution.

Trafficking in Persons

The law does not prohibit trafficking in persons; however, the Government prosecutes such offenses as violations of immigration policies. The Government is conducting a legislative review of the Immigration Act and introduced legislation that specifically makes trafficking an offense punishable by fine or imprisonment, but the Senate had not passed it by year's end. The country is primarily a transit and destination point for trafficking in persons. There have been several widely reported cases of smuggling and trafficking, including hundreds of Chinese who arrived illegally by ship in British Columbia during the summer of 1999 (see Section 2.d.).

Press reports indicate that over the past 10 years almost 15,000 Chinese have entered Canada illegally. Many of these illegal immigrants have paid large sums to be smuggled to Canada and are indentured to their traffickers upon arrival. Almost all work at lower than minimum wage and use most of their salaries to pay down their debt at usurious interest rates. The traffickers (snakeheads) use violence to ensure that their clients pay and that they do not inform the police.

Asian women and girls who are smuggled into Canada often are forced into the sex trade. Traffickers use intimidation and violence, as well as the illegal immigrants' inability to speak English, to keep these victims from running away or informing the police.

Vancouver and Toronto serve as hubs for organized crime groups that deal in trafficking in persons, including trafficking for prostitution. East Asian crime groups have targeted Canada, and Vancouver in particular, because of lax immigration laws, benefits available to immigrants, and the proximity to the U.S. border.