This article outlines how the lines between smuggling and trafficking are very thin. While many fortune-seekers from China's Fujian province use Canada as a pipeline to New York, thousands have settled in Toronto, where they live and work in the bustle of downtown Chinatown. Toronto's Fukinese community numbers between 4,000 and 8,000, Peter Yeun, a detective with the Toronto Police Service's Asian Crime Unit, says. Few are criminals by trade, but most do enter Canada illegally, paying smugglers for perilous boat journeys or fraudulent documents that allow them to come by plane. New arrivals find jobs in grocery stores and restaurants in working-class areas near Spadina Avenue and Gerrard Street East, where they work for low wages to send money to their families in China.
Many recent arrivals are refugee claimants and are permitted to work until their hearing.
Some have no legal status in Canada at all. Police seldom bother to check. Patrolling Chinatown, Det. Yeun has come to know the Fukinese migrants and the thriving smuggling racket pedaling the North American dream. Usually half is paid up front in China, the other half upon arrival.