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WHITBY FREE PRESS, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5,1987, PAGE 7 PAGE SEVEN REFUGEES As rumors circulate of yet another boatload of "refugees" off our east coast, public opinion has turned sufficiently hawkish that the federal government feels confident in recalling Parliament to tighten up on the entry of illegal migrants. The arrival of the Tamil boat people off the coast of Newfoun- dland last year and other events have polarized public opinion into two camps for an against a lenient entry policy. The arrival of the Sikhs on July 12 has tipped the scale in favor of tighter controls. Refugees are as old as. history: The Old Testament is full of displaced peoples trekking into new lands to start a new life. The reasons are the same today as they were then - war, famine, and persecution. Famine and war were responsible for the great migrations of history with persecution a distant third. Even today famine is causing the mass migration of millions of people in cen- tral and eastern Africa and within our generation war has displaced the entire nation of Palestine. But by today's definition, these people are not refugees. Following the Second World War the United Nations established a convention defining a refugee as a person who has left his country because of well-founded fears of persecution due to race, religion, nationality, social status, or political opinion. The signators to the convention agree only that they will not send a genuine refugee to a country where that per- son's life or freedom would be threatened. In order to comply with the convention a country has to have a mechanism to identify genuine refugees and in order to do that you have to be able to define persecution. Not as easy as you might think. Because relatively few people can genuinely claim persecution, refugees have not been a problem until recent years. Most coun- tries adopted liberal entry policies and established elaborate procedures which bent over backward to ensure that everybody was given a fair hearing. But as with all good things, there was a loophole and the sharpies are milking it for all its worth. In this case, would-be immigrants are claiming refugee status in order to bypass the long waiting lists. They can expect to stay in Canada for two to five years while their applications are being processed. If they get married in the meantime, they can then apply to stay on compassionate groun- ds. Or they can simply go underground. In any case it is worth the fare to Canada even if they get deported after a few years. They also know that the more clogged the system gets, the longer they can stay. Ironically the queue jumpers are frequently relatively well off and can afford the fare while people who go through legitimate channels are investing their life savings on a new life in Canada. There are now 18,000 refugee claimants living in Canada waiting for their cases to be heard and 1,500 more arrive every month. From India alone, there have been more than 200 refugee claiman- ts for every one that has been granted that status. The problem of dealing with refugees is a paradoxical one - on the one hand, you don't want to refuse anyone who legitimately faces persecution and on the other hand you don't want people using an "open door" policy to sidestep the usual immigration process. Closing the door may mean continued terror, torture or death for the real refugees. And yet, the sheer number of abusers make some kind of action essential. Deciding what constitutes persecution is not easy. If a person takes part in anti-government demonstrations in his own country and is found guilty of assaulting a police officer or some other crime, is he being persecuted? - should he be given refugee status? If a Canadian assaulted a police officer during a demon- stration here, then fled to another country to avoid sentencing, should he be given refugee status there? When does the normal ap- plication of the law become persecution? This question has recently been tested in a very unusual refugee case involving American Indian leader Robert Satiacum. Satiacum, a hereditary chief of the Puyallup Indians of Washington State, was convicted of numerous charges stemming from "illegal" operations on his tribe's reserve but he fled to Canada before he was sentenced. Satiacum claims that treaties between the Indians and the federal government overide the state laws un- der which he was convicted. On July 14, the Canadian Immigration Appeal Board decided to grant Satiacum refugee status seemingly acknoledging that he was in fact persecuted in the States and agreeing that he could not get a.fair hearing there. The decision is being appealed. In the future the Satiacum case will be cited as a precedent to justify refugee status for all kinds of claimants whose politics has run them afoul of the law. Indeed, we may well see people seeking minor political convictions in order to justify their claims. But definitions are not Canada's problem, bureaucracy is! It is only because the process takes so long that wouldbe immigrants find it worth the fare to Canada to get two to five years of relative prosperity. By speeding up the process the icentive will be removed. In 1984, Rabbi Gunther Plaut of Toronto was asked by the government to recommend changes to the system. He suggests that the process should be no longer than three months and that each claimant receive a full and fair hearing within that period with the abusers being deported quickly and decisively. A parhiamentary committee subsequently adopted most of Plaut's recommen- Sinc 1s1984 the problem has only got worse - a lot worse. Why should it have taken two loads of boat people to get things moving?. When it comes right down to it, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to this latest group of "refugees" for forcing the government to deal with the problem. i ln Tim A CONTEST FOR SUMMER STROLLERS AND SUNDAY DRIVERS Sponsored hy Whithy's LACAC* to encourage an awareness of our local architectural heritag!e Each week though the summer, the Whitby Free Press will publish a picture of an architectural detail of a building somewhere in Whitby. A draw will be made from all the correct entries received by the following Tuesday morning at 10:00 a.m. for a copy of Historic Canada ' The correct answer along with a picture and description of the building in question will be published in the next issue along with a new mystery detail. Al entries will be entered into a grand prize draw on Sept. 26, 1987 LAST WEEK'S DETAIL We Stumped You! Nobody gave us the correct answer for last week's clue. The picture to the left is another detail from the same building. You have one more chance! If you can identify this picture, submit entry below to the Whitby Free Press, 131 Brock St. N., Whitby, L1N 5S1. Winner will be selected next Tuesday at 10 a.m. LOCATION Name Address Phone No. *LOCAL ARCHITE CTURAL CONSERVANCY ADVISORY COMMITTEE 1 ý iýl'f race