Refugees, Victims, or Killers

Abstract

Few stereotypes about the Atlantic slave trade are more familiar than popular impressions of the Middle Passage -- the crossing from Africa to America. Huge ships -- crammed to the gunwales with Africans, packed together like spoons, chained to one another, daily exposed to white brutality, meager provisions, and hygienical neglect -- in long, slow voyages suffered abnormally high mortality rates for their hapless passengers. James A. Rawley, The Transatlantic Slave Trade -- A History(f.1)Few Canadians would believe that, with some minor amendments or variations of detail. this description applies today to, thousands of Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans who pay huge sums to be transported to Western Europe, the United States, or Canada. Fewer still would believe that, on arrival, thousands are forced into a life of slavery, prostitution, and degradation to pay off the gangsters who brought them.These horrors are with us, as the authorities in any major Canadian city can attest; they are an aspect of the world-wide phenomenon of massive migration from crowded, poor countries to the relatively rich.It is a disturbing situation which, in the hands of international crime syndicates, is overwhelming Western efforts to maintain a rational, regulated immigration system.Of greater concern is the fact that one of the major baits which traffickers use to draw migrants into the trap is the assurance that, if they are detected after they slip into a Western country, a simple phrase will protect them from deportation for months, years, and in, most cases, forever. That phrase is 'I seek political asylum.' The traffickers can give this assurance because, in many cases, they and their criminal brethren engaged in the drug trade and terrorism achieved a safe haven in the West by using the same passwords.This is one of the more troubling aspects of the trade in human beings -- its cynical reliance on an international system which was designed to provide protection for those who face persecution by their own governments. Canada, like most countries, is a signatory to the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, a convention negotiated after World War II when millions of people in Europe had been driven from their homes and could not safely return. As an official in the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said of the convention: 'It is necessary to recall the spirit which existed at the time ... There was a desire to create a better world in which the horrors of World War Two would not be repeated. So far as the world remained an imperfect one, it should at least be ensured that victims of oppression and persecution obliged to leave their home country as refugees should be decently treated by the international community.(f.2)Canada chaired the committee that drafted the 1951 Convention, and, although it waited nearly 18 years before signing it, it has always been a major supporter of the UNHCR. The Convention, which remains in effect today, defines a refugee as a person who, 'as a result of events occurring before 1st January, 1951 and owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.' The convention was clearly designed to deal with the problem of a million refugees and displaced persons in Europe following World War II and the Soviet takeover of eastern Europe. The 1967 Protocol removed the time limitation and extended the definition to the entire world. During the past decade, however, this well-intentioned programme has been broadened and corrupted to such an extent that it is now increasingly used by transnational gangs and their clients to bypass normal immigration controls.Ironically, many of those who enter Canada and other Western countries by this spurious method were not persecuted in their own countries; their persecution begins only when they put themselves in the hands of the traffickers. …