Migrant each paid 60 to 80,000 U.S!

Twelve illegal migrants stopped while trying to reach Canada
Group disguised as martial-arts performers

GEOFFREY YORK

From Globe and Mail / July 12, 2007

BEIJING — China has broken up a human-trafficking ring that was attempting to smuggle 12 Chinese migrants into Canada in the guise of lion dancers and martial-arts performers.

The migrants each paid $60,000 to $80,000 (U.S.) to the snakeheads, the organizers of the smuggling ring, in an effort to enter Canada permanently, according to Chinese media reports yesterday.

Chinese police arrested the 12 people, along with two snakeheads, as they tried to enter Hong Kong at a border crossing in southern China last month. They were planning to travel to Canada from Hong Kong and had already obtained passports and a fraudulent invitation from a Chinese-Canadian man, the reports said.

Canada remains one of the most popular destinations for Chinese migrants, including those who seek to enter illegally, although it has been years since Canada experienced a high-profile case involving boatloads of illegal migrants arriving by sea.

Until a few years ago, Chinese smugglers were charging about $20,000 to $30,000 for each person they smuggled into Canada. But the price has doubled or tripled since then.

In a case in May, a 19-year-old Chinese man paid $65,000 to a smuggling ring in an attempt to enter Canada through Taiwan on a doctored passport.

After a tip by Taiwanese authorities, he was detained by Canadian police as soon as he landed at the Vancouver airport and was put on a plane back to Taiwan.

Both the Taiwan case and the latest case involved migrants from Fujian, a province in southern China with a long history of migration to the West.

A report by the U.S. State Department in 2004 estimated that 15,000 Chinese had entered Canada illegally over the previous decade. Many ended up as prostitutes or indentured workers who spent years repaying their debts to the snakeheads.

In the latest case, the masterminds were a Chinese-Canadian man named Shen, who lived in Toronto, and an unemployed Chinese man named Chen, according to the reports yesterday by a Chinese newspaper and news agency.

In 2005, Mr. Chen came to know Mr. Shen through the Internet. The Toronto man offered to pay 100,000 yuan (about $14,000 Canadian) to Mr. Chen for every worker that he smuggled into Canada. He suggested that the migrants could be hidden inside a cultural performance group.

The 12 migrants from Fujian were recruited by a man nicknamed "the Boss."

After agreeing to pay $60,000 to $80,000 each to the snakeheads, they travelled to Henan province in central China to train as lion dancers and dragon dancers.

Mr. Chen made a deal with a martial-arts master named Feng, who agreed to include the 12 migrants in his martial-arts group. They also obtained help from a Chinese-Canadian man named Zhong, who issued an invitation to the group to travel to Canada for performances.

On June 29, the group flew to Shenzhen in southern China. But when they tried to cross the border to Hong Kong, they were taken into custody.

Under police questioning, the migrants eventually admitted the scheme. They were arrested, along with Mr. Chen and Mr. Feng, Chinese media reported.