Despite the tough talk below that's what the law is.
And frankly it's hard to see what can be done other than to let the ship in -- were the Forces supposed to fire on an unarmed ship full of people? There is no point talking about turning away ships -- that's not realistic -- the fix is to fix the refugee system so it works quickly and fairly.
Genuine refugees should be admitted and those not genuine excluded and all that should be done humanely and in a matter of a few weeks. I am sure there are legitimate refugees on the Tamil ship -- and probably some who aren't -- so let's sort 'em out. There's where there is work to be done -- tough work yes but necessary work:
"Public Safety Minister Vic Toews stressed Thursday the migrants are not welcome and issued a warning:
"We want to send a very clear message that this type of activity — specifically human trafficking and human smuggling — [is] illegal, it's criminal and we will take the strongest steps possible in order to deter it."
Some of the migrants are believed to be members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elan, which has been outlawed in Canada as a terrorist group since 2006.
Naval and RCMP officers boarded the ship on Thursday at approximately 9:30 p.m. ET, according to the Prime Minister's Office, in order to take control of it and steer it to Esquimalt.
Government sources told CBC News that the ship was first visually identified by military vessels at 2:30 p.m. ET and that the vessel entered Canadian territorial waters at 5:30 p.m. ET.
Toews said the best way to deal with migrant ships is to wait until they enter Canadian waters. "Intervening on the high seas brings certain legal obligations and a number of legal problems, and so it's better to intercept them, I'm advised, inside of Canadian territorial waters.
"The passengers would be "processed according to their claims" and that if the claims were found to be invalid they would "not be treated as refugees," he said.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/08/13/bc-tamil-ship-migrants-esquimalt.html#ixzz0wTzwPLVT"
2 comments:
Thank you for the well reasoned post on this matter. It is unfortunate at how many people are jumping to conclusions on this matter.
I have written on today's landing at my blog: http://www.smeurrens.com/2010/08/mv-sun-sea-arrives/
I'm curious as to what you think the impact of Bill C-11 will be on the process. Given that you state that the process should take a matter of weeks, I assume that you support the recent changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act?
James, are you saying that Canada is obliged to take in all refugees who make it ashore in Canada in whatever numbers may appear?
The first ship was 70 odd people, the next was 500ish. There are supposedly two more ships coming. Once the example is set what is to stop a ship loading up a few thousand refugees from Liberia or Somalia and just dropping them off? If the law says that Canada cannot pick and choose which refugees it accepts once they make it to Canadian soil then really we are saying that the government of Canada has no control over immigration, either in numbers, type, region of origin, suitability, or any other category that are traditionally used. The only thing keeping this from becoming a crisis is the number of ships coming. Is that because of practicality or price or some other factor that may suddenly change in the supposed-refugee's favour? If so then this precedent will be incredibly dangerous.
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