Seeking Asylum: Human Smuggling and Bureaucracy at the Border

INTRODUCTION: Struggles to Land in States of Migration

xiii Openings and Closures: “The Long Tunnel Thesis” On July 20, 1999, off the coast of British Columbia, Canadian authorities intercepted what would be the first of four boats to arrive during a period of sixweekswith atotal of 599tired andhungrywomen, men, and children on board. The YuanYee carried 123 people from the coastal province of Fujian, China. They were estimated to have been at sea for approximately thirtynine days, smuggled on retrofitted fishing trawlers from Fujian and intercepted en route to North America. The Department of National Defense (DND) first spotted the boat as it entered Canadian territorial waters, which begin and end twelve miles offshore. The DND contacted the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), the federal agency tasked with managing immigration and refugee claims and with border enforcement. Ultimately, some twelve federal departments became involved in the interceptions , but CIC served as coordinating agency in the interceptions and subsequent processing and detention. A harrowing encounter ensued after this and each subsequent ship was intercepted. Federal ships chased smugglers , who tried to conceal their cargo as well as the details of the journey. They jettisoned GPS and other technology that would betray the details of what had by then become a highly lucrative industry of transporting migrants across the Pacific to North America. British Columbia proved a desirable entry point, where smugglers believed the ships could land undetected along the isolated, if rugged, coast. Though it was not yet known, the migrants were most likely headed south to the United States. After being transported for processing to the Esquimalt naval base outside of Victoria on Vancouver Island, most made refugee claims, asking the Canadian government for protection from persecution they might suffer if returned home.1 Once a person makes a refugee claim in Canada, he or she Introduction Struggles to Land in States of Migration xiv Introduction is generally granted access to a refugee lawyer and begins the challenging task of proving—like refugee claimants everywhere—that his or her fear of persecution, if returned home, is well founded. This did not happen right away in the case of those intercepted from China, so Canadian refugee lawyers actuallyhadto request accesstothe claimants. Aheated debate ensued. The government wanted to buy time to learn as much as possible about the migrants and the conditions of their journey, conduct a criminal investigation , and figure out how to proceed with processing. In response to the lawyers ’ request, the government reworked the local geography by temporarily designating the base a “port of entry,” thereby declaring the migrants in the stage of being processed. This decision shaped migrants’ access to legal rights. Authorities denied migrants access to lawyers until processing in the port of entry had been completed. During this time, immigration officers conducted preliminary interviews with migrants to determine their intentions in landing in Canada. These interviews and the information collected later became the source of controversy and legal struggle. As I conducted research with the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada in the aftermath of the boat arrivals, officials at times proudly and at times jokingly explained to me the details of this decision that they called “the long tunnel thesis.” Migrants would be treated as though they were walking through the long tunnels of an international airport, not yet landed on Canadian soil. This decision transformed sovereign space for a window of time into what Suvendrini Perera (2002c) would call “not Canada.” Although the migrants were located on Canadian sovereign territory for the duration of their processing, they were not yet in Canada for legal purposes. Instead, they found themselves in an interstitial processing zone, somewhere between Canada and not-Canada, paradoxically neither in nor out. This book explores what states do in their interventions into human migration. What are their daily practices regarding populations on the move? How do civil servants working under stressful conditions of crisis respond to human smuggling? Where does this work happen? The story above illustrates but one of many struggles between states and migrants over migration and refugee policies. The brief yet important intervention in western Canada when bureaucrats designed the “long tunnel thesis” signals the importance of locating decisions about migration with attention to the microlevel, grounded daily practices of government employees working simultaneously in urban office towers and along remote borders of Canada. The elongation of the long tunnel raises questions about the Introduction xv power of states...