Subscribe to one of our news e-mail lists. Officers contacted individuals, and we had to remove the containers from the vessel. Monday's discovery of three dead Chinese immigrants in a shipping container in Seattle helped refocus attention on the growing business of using several West Coast destinations as points of entry in attempts to gain political asylum. The 25 immigrants taken into custody over New Year's weekend, all of them apparently in good health, face deportation unless they convince a Canadian immigration court that they are legitimate refugees. There were mattresses laid out on the floor, it was pretty dirty, wasn't very healthy, not a good way to travel.
Buckets substitute for toilets.
Small generators in each container supply power as immigrants survive on bottled water and little food. Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cpl. Most of the illegal immigrants come from China's eastern coastal province of Fujian and are thought to be headed for the United States. Many of the immigrants head for New York, where a huge network exists to house the immigrants and employ them so they can pay off their indentured servitude to the smugglers. Some of the shipping crates are the size of small mobile homes Effort aimed at preventing illegal immigration Canadian Immigration Minister Elinor Caplan said this week she would visit China in April to warn potential immigrants against turning to people-smugglers who would only exploit them.