How Chinese Are Smuggled Into Canada -- Nothing Much Changes; the Scams Just Continue

Written by Paul Fromm

Thursday, 27 October 2011 07:20

*How Chinese Are Smuggled Into Canada -- Nothing Much Changes; the Scams Just Continue* From the archives, *Ottawa Citizen*, April 29, 1961: "In various communities across Canada -- particularly Vancouver, Montreal, Winnipeg and Toronto -- some hundreds of young Chinese who have entered Canada illegally during the past few years are living hard -- and uneasy -- lives. Among them are some who are required to work from 10 to 14 hours or more hours a day, frequently seven days a week. Their pay is a pittance according to Canadian standards -- possibly averaging $100 a month. From this they must pay both their plane fares from Hong Kong and the high fees charges by the agents who smuggled them into the country. These men have been assured by federal government officials that, if they tell their stories to the police, they will be allowed to remain in the country. The racketeers now preying upon them will be sent to jail. From this proposition the illegal Chinese immigrants would appear to have everything to gain. But there has so far been little response to the appeals by government and police. And some Canadian Chinese communities seem to be attempting to thwart the biggest investigation in the history of the *Royal Canadian Mounted Police*. [Well, a lucky break there! This was excellent training for what was to come: Twenty years later, what would genuinely be the biggest investigation in the history of the *RCMP* -- the hapless *Air India* enquiry -- was to be similarly stymied at every turn by overarching ethnic loyalties and disloyalty to Canada!] When the story of the investigation first broke, many well-educated members of Chinese communities were quoted as sympathizing with those who used illegal methods to bring their relatives to Canada. They said the smuggling was the outcome of Canada's discriminatory immigration rules. Persons of Chinese extraction who are legal residents of Canada may bring in their husbands or wives, unmarried sons and daughters under 21, mothers over 60 and fathers over 65. Many other groups in Canada, it was pointed out, are not bound by such narrow restrictions. 'Chinese are law-abiding citizens but are forced to take irregular channels to bring members of their families to Canada only because of unfair immigration rules,' *Charles Foo*, a leader of Winnipeg's Chinese community, told a mass meeting of Chinese in Toronto. This point of view, one that is prevalent in the Chinese communities across Canada, is commonly given as justification for the large-scale smuggling. *But the facts that have come to light through the current investigation seem to indicate that in relatively few cases is strong family feeling the basis for illegal immigration. The real cause of the racket is the money to be made from it.* The average cost of getting an illegal immigrant into Canada is believed to be about $4,000. Of this, between $1,000 and $1,500 will be paid to the Canadian resident of Chinese origin who has some claim to bring a relative to Canada. The operators of the racket at the Hong Kong end will also receive a share. The net profit to the Canadian agent for each illegal immigrant averages about $1,500. Despite evidence to the contrary, many have clung to the mistaken belief that discrimination in Canada's immigration policy is the main reason for the racket's existence. When *newspapers reported that possibly 11,000 Chinese had come to Canada illegally over the past ten years, the Chinese communities held protest meetings, raised immigrant-defence funds and sent a delegation to Ottawa to see the Prime Minister*. The reaction to the smuggling charges was one of surprised indignation. Yet, it is likely that the 11,000 figure is a conservative one and that possibly most Chinese who have come here since the war have entered the country illegally. [In other words, smuggling efforts really took off once Chinese were able to enter Canada without constraint.] Whatever their public attitude, immigration officials and a large part of the Chinese community must have looked upon the smuggling revelations as just the latest chapter in an old story. Since before the turn of the century, the use of illegal routes into Canada has been so common that many Chinese seem to have regarded it as the normal means of entry. ... Canadian immigration authorities were aware of this 'slot racket' and had been attempting for years to fight it. Shortage of staff, pressures from Canada, and the guile of the Chinese conspirators handicapped their efforts. The 'slot,' I learned, is the key to illegal immigration. The technique of the smuggling agents in Hong Kong and the nearby Portuguese colony of Macao is to fit a bogus immigrant into a 'slot' -- the identity of a Chinese who has a legitimate claim to enter Canada -- so well that he can escape detection. ... A typical case would be that of a man who first came to Canada in 1914 on payment of the head tax of $500. By the early 'thirties he had saved enough money for a trip home to China to visit his wife. When he returned to Canada about a year later, he reported to immigration authorities that a son had recently been born to his wife and that another baby was on the way. Some months later, he stated that the second baby had been born. This was also a son. Five or six years later, the man again returned to China for the permissible visit of less than two years and, on return, reported the birth of two more sons. Since there was no registration of births in China, there was no proof beyond the word of the man, and possibly his relatives, that the children did, in fact, exist -- or even that he was married. But for immigration purposes he had four sons whose 'papers' or claims to emigrate to Canada commanded a price of $1,000 to $1,500 each. If nothing else had aroused the suspicions of government authorities, the abnormal number of sons born would have done so. It has been estimated unofficially that the men who returned to China on visits had four to five sons born to them for each daughter. The birth rate was also phenomenal considering the brevity of their visits and the fact that most of those who could afford to pay for the voyage were no longer young men. How old this racket is may be seen from the fact that false declarations of births were made in the 'twenties and 'thirties so the papers could be sold some 20 years later [as] Canadian law permits sons and daughters under 21 to join their parents in Canada. ... Since Chinese men often appear to Westerners to be younger than they actually are, some have passed through immigration who were much older than their documents indicated. Married men with families have come to Canada as single men under 21. Once here, they have had to cope with the problem of getting wives and families to Canada. This may be done by having a Chinese from Canada go to Hong Kong and 'marry' the wife, who poses as a widow. She and the children then come to Canada as the dependents of the Canadian Chinese. These relationships have on occasion become extremely complicated. Canadian Chinese have sold 'slots' for their real sons and daughters, who they believed would never get out of Communist China. When these offspring have turned up in Hong Kong as refugees the parents have had to buy papers from other Chinese and bring illegally to Canada the children who were entitled to enter legally. There are instances where a new-born baby of Chinese parentage has been taken to a number of doctors in Canada by different women to have the birth registered. Each woman explained that the baby was delivered with the help of a midwife. A single baby has, thus, been instrumental in providing up to a dozen birth certificates to be sold some 20 years later. Young men and women who speak no English have produced these proofs of Canadian birth in Hong Kong when applying to go to Canada. They explain that their parents brought them back to China as infants and that they have been there ever since. Still others base their claims on yellowed receipts for the head tax paid by supposed fathers when they emigrated to Canada many years ago. [Given the length and breadth of these enduring scams, it is risible to learn that new demands are agitating for head tax redress payouts to extend to putative descendants -- or a reasonable facsimile of such.] So, many of the older generation of Chinese came to Canada illegally that many of them may regard it all as a bit of a game. *A Royal Commission appointed in 1910 discovered that Chinese were pouring into the port of Vancouver illegally. In August 1910, a total of 53 arrived as stowaways aboard a single vessel*. Scores of members of ship's crews changed clothes ashore with friends who wished to visit China, and stayed on to work in Canada. Some crew members, on going ashore, posed as Canadian residents and applied for permits to visit China. On their return to China, they sold the permits to prospective immigrants who looked enough like them to pass the Canadian immigration inspectors. Genuine residents of Canada going back to China to retire sold their Canadian papers to other would-be immigrants who roughly resembled them. ... Canadian police and immigration officials can testify to this. And a wall of silence and ignorance descends when an officer attempts to obtain information in the Chinatown of a Canadian city. Whatever the success of the investigation, it seems likely that immigration from Hong Kong will show a marked decline in the next few years." Hah! When Hong Kong reverted to Chinese suzerainty, Canada's *laissez faire* posture would grease admission of unknowable numbers *of Big Circle Boys* and other triad gangsters, bent cops and well-heeled bribers*.* [This article appears in the October, 2011 issue of the *CANADIAN IMMIGRATION HOTLINE*. Published monthly, the *CANADIAN IMMIGRATION HOTLINE*is available by subscription for $30 per year. You can subscribe by sending a cheque or VISA number and expiry date to *CANADIAN IMMIGRATION HOTLINE*, P.O. Box 332, Rexdale, ON., M9W 5L3.]

 

China Reverts to Its Old Arrogance

Written by Paul Fromm

Wednesday, 26 October 2011 02:46

* China Reverts to Its Old Arrogance * ** *The long introduction may be less than arresting - but keep reading! (I've marked the transition point with red) the 2nd half is a spittle sermon of anti-Western contempt and loathing (Oh why can't those loser Westerners be more modest in their attitude toward the great and glorious 'Middle Kingdom? ' Fists clenched: Shall we have to teach them a lesson?) Nice to recover the old swagger and all that, but for people supposedly blessed with a long memory, notice no mention of more recent triumphs -- a China crippled through persistent superstition, crippled by grotesque misshapen hoofs for females, crippled through creation of eunuchs, crippled through repeated defeat at the hands of outside states, crippled by the excesses of the cultural revolution -- a billion automatons wearing matching pyjamas, consulting the little red book as they gnaw the bark off trees, etc ad nauseam. For all the arrogance, there is a back beat of nervous excess to it, an unstated awareness that China has rapidly forgotten the degradations of centuries, but talk about the heartless soul of the place! I would have been happy to see some acknowledgement of the West's suspicion of an economy based on the production of toxic trinkets, but no such luck. It certainly reads like a very direct translation from the Chinese. * *Blind hatred lurks in Western views *By Jian Junbo *Asia Times* (Oct 21, 2011( LONDON - The "China threat theory" is re-emerging in Western narratives, seemingly buoyed by the pace of modernization within the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and a recent focus on the chances of military confrontation with the United States in China's backyard. More often than not, however, Western perceptions of the threat take an ill-informed trajectory that spins from the orbit of reality. A rising China is a natural competitor for the United States in the Pacific, according to a recent study by public policy think-tank the RAND Corporation, which states that although the prospects for war are limited, they are real and may prove difficult to minimize. As an objective assessment of the study in the *Atlantic **Sentinel* puts it: ... RAND ... examines not so much the likelihood of a direct confrontation with China, but rather how and where a crisis could develop and then escalate into war. If it chose, RAND observes, China could become a more formidable threat to the US than Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were at the height of their power. China doesn't appear to seek territorial expansion or ideological aggrandizement at the expense of other countries and the United States is likely to remain militarily superior. But in its immediate neighborhood, China could achieve hegemony. "In consequence, the direct defense of contested assets in that region will become progressively more difficult, eventually approaching impossible," according to the RAND Corporation. [1] In an interview with the Washington Post last week, Aaron Friedberg, former deputy assistant for national security affairs and director of policy planning for former vice president Dick Cheney, sees a clear and present danger in China's point of view, saying: Although they are careful not to say so, I believe that China's present leaders seek eventually to displace the United States as the preponderant power in East Asia. The Chinese Communist Party believes that the United States and its allies aim to encircle China, to constrict its growth and to transform it eventually into a liberal democracy. They regard the U.S. presence in Asia, its network of bases, alliances, and forward deployed military forces, as an unnatural, temporary intrusion and a potential threat. With the United States gone, China should be able to resume its traditional position as the dominant regional power. [2] The issue is one of perceptions. For the view of China from an American perspective, we can turn to the latest survey by Rasmussen Reports, an electronic media company, which described its assessment as the most negative in three years of surveying public opinion. The poll shows 62% of American adults now see China as an emerging, long-term danger to the US. Only 9% of Americans now describe the Asian powerhouse as a US ally. Fifty-eight percent say China is somewhere between being an ally and being an enemy. And 27% see China as an outright enemy, compared with 16% when the same question was asked in April. [3] Perceptions of the China threat took on a distinct air of unreality last week when a Japanese online news report said that according to "a latest survey" by the Telegraph, a British newspaper, many British people saw China as a threat and the PLA was so powerful that it could take over London overnight and conquer the whole of United Kingdom in three months. Without checking their facts, some Chinese-language media in Hong Kong picked this up, spinning the threat with headlines such as "The PLA can take over London overnight". As a matter of fact, the *Telegraph* started the online survey on March 4, 2008, and invited public comments on such questions as "Is the US - and the West as a whole - right to fear China's increasing military might? Do you believe China's official line that its investments are 'defensive' in nature? Is it hypocritical of the US - or Britain - to worry about China's military aggression?" Up to date, 120 comments have been posted, and the latest was dated on March 23, 2010. [4] From the perspective of objective news reporting, the *Telegraph* survey has little value. However, it allows respondents to give their views on the issue - a step more revealing of perceptions and attitudes than the presentation of statistical figures in a survey. The range of expressions enables readers, especial Chinese readers, to better understand how Westerners think and argue over the "China threat", and as set apart from charges by Western politician and media. As such, it is still worth some reflection from a Chinese point of view. In general, the 120 comments can be categorized into two schools of thought. One holds that the West is right to fear China's aggression, though most characterize the sense of aggression as deriving more from China's increasing economic might than its military modernization. Another school sees China as no substantial threat to the West in coming decades, and sees that as a function of the many internal problems faced by the Middle Kingdom. Those who believe China is a threat give various reasons: China is so big that it will swallow the rest of the world; China is a non-democratic state; and China takes an imperialist external policy. For instance, a comment said: "The real world problem is overpopulation and there are simply not enough resources to meet China's growing economic ambition. If the Chinese are to enjoy the same standard of living as we do in the West ... it's likely to be messy". Another accurately calculated that for "China to achieve the 'Western' standard of living [it] will require 6x [six times] the resources and commodities the world now produces" ... "The Chinese government wishes to increase military spending ... possibly because China recognizes the scarcity of the world's resources. Wars have often been fought over resources." Some others argued that "China is governed by evil communism, they're using slavery methods in they're own country"; or "China is not a democracy. It is not threatened by any other country." China "is now a superpower with no democracy. This means it can build the world's largest airport terminal within 4 years; Heathrow's T5 will take about 15 [years to build]." Still others thought that China is like an imperialist country. One comment said China is "taking advantages of Indian democracy, by using Indian communists as their agents, to further their movement, as Russia was using its neighboring-countries in 1950s and 1960s. China is on the same path". Some others talked about "China's aggressive external policy" toward Taiwan and Tibet. "For the past 10 to 15 years China has been saying they are going to attack Taiwan and fight a war with the US. They are currently trying to prevent ships from other nations from sailing across the South China Sea. Do these sound like the actions of a peaceful nation?" All in all, as a comment summed up: "Well, from the comments I have read, it is not about fear. It's hatred. It surprises me that so many of them hate China so much". One may add that apart from hatred, there are also expressions of prejudice and ignorance. But what does this toe-dip into a small sea of Western perceptions mean for the West, for China and for the world? Western people may fully agree that he who hates others will blind to others. If the minds of ordinary Western people are full of hatred for China, it's regrettable yet carries some truth that they are totally blind to China. There is still quite a big gap to be filled between China's reality and Western people's knowledge of China's reality. Ironically, it can be said most people who are blind to China's reality would not admit their blindness - and may even lack the will or courage to listen to opposite opinions. In this regard, a joke in China is perhaps revealing. It has it that a Falungong follower preaches to a person on street, telling him not to listen to the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda about the cult. The person asks, "Have you read any of those articles that criticize Falungong?" ... "No,'' says the Falungong devotee, ''we never read articles that are incorrect." *How can one conclude an article is false without reading it? Unfortunately, Westerners blind to China's reality are just like the Falungong follower in the joke. Obstinacy and prejudice give them every excuse to show no interest in getting to know about the real China. * Western-centralism is perhaps the basic reason behind some ignorance and prejudice on China's reality. A long history of Western-centric views influences the prism through which the West looks at and understand the rest of the world, including China. Western-centric thinking has led Western people to look much more inward than outward. For instance, Americans are notorious for their poor knowledge of world geography; many of them unable to spot any difference between Singapore and Shanghai. By contrast, in the drive to modernize their country, the Chinese have been eagerly learning about the West. Today, many ordinary Chinese know the name of the US president, the capitals of Britain, France and Germany, and take a great interest in major international affairs. But how many Western people know that Hu Jintao is the Chinese leader or that the nation's capital is Beijing, not Shanghai? The West considers itself the lighthouse of world economy, freedom and democracy. With ideals that embolden a sense of superiority, Western thinking goes that other nations in the world ought to learn everything about the West, and that only the West has the right to "lecture" other nations. That means the West in general doesn't have typical interest to learn more about foreign cultures or realities. Furthermore, a Western-centric viewpoint has led the West to develop an aggressive or offensive culture that always asks non-Western nations to accept the values based on Western and Christian cultures. As such, Western people have no interest to learn or know much about others' cultures, values and ideas. They only want to pragmatically learn something when doing business with other nations. Meanwhile, those views are based on dichotomy which sees the world only as black or white, right and wrong, good or evil - and nothing in between. Since they think they're right, standing on a God-supported and -selected side, others like Chinese must be wrong if they don't take to Western suggestions or models. Because of this, when China takes a different approach from the West, then China is labeled as an autocratic state with ignorant mass under evil communist party's ruling. Ironically, ignorant as some Westerners may be about China, they think they know more and better about the country than Chinese. Typical examples are their views on Taiwan and Tibet. Even though their governments solemnly recognize Taiwan and Tibet as parts of China, many Westerners still insist that they are independent countries. Apart from a Western-centric ideology, governments and media organizations in the West should also be held responsible for people's prejudice and hostility toward China. Western governments tend to intervene in China's internal affairs as one part of their policies toward China, and particularly, powers like the US, France or Britain are interested in changing China in terms with the Western model and values. Under this strategy, it's easy for them to consider China as a competitor, challenger and even threat at a time when China's rise economically and militarily is not based on the Western road map. Western governments are inclined through their media to expose bad images of China or to publicly criticize China, and even try to shape wrong ideas about the country. In this sense, the Western media is an indispensable government assistant in efforts of Western governments to demonize China and make their public more blind to China's reality. As long as the Western mainstream median like CNN or BBC prefers to reports negative news of China or report China with prejudices, the picture of China remains distorted in the minds of Western publics. According to statistics by China's Press and Publication Administration, in the last century China translated into Chinese and published 1,068,000 books from their original English, German, Italian, Spain and Russian. By comparison, only 800 Chinese books had been translated and published in the West over the same century. More and more Westerners are coming to study in Chinese universities for Mandarin training or to earn degrees, or are traveling as tourists, and an increasing number of Western academic institutions offer courses in China Studies. But that is still not sufficient when, for instance, many Western Sinologists don't even understand Chinese language. To some degree, Western blindness to China has nothing to do with China, except it impresses upon Chinese people that most Western publics have so little knowledge and a great deal of ignorance about a country with 5,000 years of history that has undergone huge changes in its reality. For the Chinese, they don't have any interest in asking other nations to understand China or even teach others to learn from Chinese people. Doing their own best is best for the world, and as Confucius said "If Barbarians don't follow us, we should just enhance our own education and cultivate our morality to attract them to come". However, if Western countries' policy toward China is mostly based on blindness, damage will continue to be done to relations between China and the West, and Western interests inevitably will be hurt too. So it seems there is a chasm for the West to fill between itself and China. *The gap can be narrowed if Western people have the will and sincerity to respect China and understand this country with a more modest attitude. * *Notes 1. "War With China: How It Could Happen,"* *Atlantic Sentinel, Oct 14, 2011. 2. Interview with Aaron Friedberg: Is China going to displace the U.S.?, Washington Post, Oct 16, 2011. 3. Rasmussen: 62% See" China as Threat to US," Newsmax, Oct 3, 2011. 4." Is the West right to fear China?", Telegraph, Mar 4, 2008.* *Dr Jian Junbo, an assistant professor of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University, Shanghai, China, is currently an academic visitor at London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom. *

 

25th Annual European American Heritage Festival in Pulaski Celebrates America’s Eur

Written by Paul Fromm

Tuesday, 25 October 2011 07:06

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This email newsletter was sent to you in graphical HTML format. If you're seeing this version, your email program prefers plain text emails. You can read the original version online: http://ymlp250.net/zmEvgU -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 25th Annual European American Heritage Festival in Pulaski Celebrates America’s European Founding/Settler People PULASKI, TN. October 22, 2011. The march of pride stretched out more than a city block here. Over 100 patriots, two from as far away as Canada, marched behind a fluttering sea of the flags of their European homelands on a crisp Autumn day to celebrate European achievements and pride. The 25th annual European American Heritage Festival was pronounced a “solid success” by organizer Pastor Thomas Robb of the Christian Revival Center in Harrison, AR. The event started 25 years ago to protest plans to proclaim Martin Luther King Day. In recent years, it morphed into a celebration of pride in the European founding/settler people of the United States. The event featured literature tables, tables displaying teeshirts, with a goodly display of Confederate memorabilia, and tables with home crafts and jewellery .For the first time, there was a custom and antique car show. Lively music was provided by Heritage Connection – Charity Dunscombe and Shelby Pendergraft, Pastor Robb’s grand daughters, who have just brought out their fourth CD. The purpose of the European-American Heritage Festival is “to offer an opportunity to European-Americans (usually called White Americans) to demonstrate love for their heritage, people and culture,” explains Pastor Robb. “We gather here to exercise free speech in this beautiful Tennessee town founded by our White ancestors,” Rachel Pendergraft the MC told the crowd gathered in the spacious parking lot of the Giles C County Court House’s. “Every single signer of the Declaration of Independence was of European descent,” Pastor Robb told the crowd. This is our land,” he added. “It was your forefathers who faced savage Indians, tilled the soil, and irrigated parched land, once considered worthless and made it produce food to feed the nation and to feed many others. It was your forefathers who harnessed the forces of Nature.” The reason the politically correct hate you, Pastor Robb explained “is because the moment you become proud again, you become a conqueror again. Europeans came to this continent as free men, not as slaves in a ship or sneaking across another people’s border. Our frontier was their ‘New England’ – a European country,” he added. “White students are ashamed that they have no culture. They are told by those who wish our genocide that they have no ‘groove’, ‘soul’ or rhythm’. But out of the European blood of their ancestors came waltzes, symphonies, classical and country music. While others were hanging on a hollow log, our European ancestors were making pianos and guitars,” he said. “What happened to the republic given to us by our forefathers?” Pastor Robb wondered. He reminded the festival attendees that, coming out of Independence Hall in Philadelphia after signing the Declaration of Independence, a then aged and feeble Benjamin Franklin was confronted by a woman who demanded: “ Dr. Franklin, what have you given us?” “Lady,” Benjamin Franklin replied,” we have given you a republic, if you can keep it.” In a stirring conclusion to his remarks, Pastor Robb reminded the crowd: “The Fifth Commandment says, ‘Honour thy Father and thy Mother that your days may be long upon the land.’ If we lose it now, it will be because of our failure to love our heritage, to love our people and to do our duty.” The festival attracted a film crew from New York City and a reporter from French television Channel Plus who had travelled from Paris specially to cover this aspect of American politics. Festival sponsors included the American Free Press and the Barnes Review, the Derek Black Show, broadcaster James Edwards and the Political Cesspool, Reason Radio Network the Abundant Life Fellowship, author and broadcaster Dr. Tomislav Sunic, the Nationalist Times, and the Canadian Association for Free Expression. CAFÉ Director Paul Fromm gave extensive interviews to the press. “I was delighted to see two giant Red Ensigns, the flag of the real Canada, proudly carried in the ranks of the flags of our European homelands,” he said. _____________________________ Unsubscribe / Change Profile: http://ymlp250.net/u.php?id=gmjhqsqgsgbbqgume Powered by YourMailingListProvider