This is an update of the smuggling case we first reported here in 2009. (Visit that post for background on Tamil Tigers)
From The Province:
Mounties arrested four men in the Toronto area on Tuesday in connection with the MV Ocean Lady, the freighter that brought 76 illegal migrants to Canada’s West Coast more than a year-and-a-half ago.
The arrests are the first stemming from RCMP investigations into humansmuggling networks in Southeast Asia that have sent hundreds of Sri Lankan refugee claimants to Canada aboard two freighters.
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said his government welcomes the news of the arrests.
Canada is working on even tougher laws, but this sounds pretty tough to me!
Anyone convicted of helping more than 10 undocumented migrants enter Canada faces up to life imprisonment and a $1-million fine under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The Conservatives have drafted a bill that would toughen Canada’s antihuman-smuggling policies but it has not yet been made into law.
This reminds me, whatever happened to the Church World Service connected human smuggler reported in the New York Times here in 2007? She was taking more than ten Haitians at a time across the border into Canada. See our previous posts on that story here and here.
I just wrote about Church World Service spending your tax dollars in Pakistan here yesterday. You might want to use our search function for ‘Church World Service’—they are busy little taxpayer-funded social justice advocates at 475 Riverside Dr., New York, NY.
Sorry Canadian readers, I kind of drifted off track from human smuggling to an American NGO (or maybe it isn’t so far off track)….