(This column was published in the North Shore News on Nov. 19, 1997)
Questions of immigration
By Leo Knight
WHEN news broke this summer that alleged Macau Triad leader, Tong Sang Lai, short-circuited our immigration system and obtained landed immigrant status, new Immigration Minister Lucienne Robillard began stonewalling and hiding behind the Privacy Act in refusing to answer how this travesty might have occurred.
She ultimately realized the outcry wasn't going away and announced career diplomat Joe Bissett would be going to Los Angeles, where Lai's application was processed, to investigate why and how he was allowed into this country.
Lai is the reputed head of the Wo On Lok or "Shiu Fong" triad, a major player in the lucrative gambling and loan-sharking business in the Portuguese colony.
The "Shiu Fong" (water rat) triad have been engaged in a bloody gangland war with the "14K" triad of nearby Hong Kong in a dispute over control in Macau. The shooting war has claimed over a dozen lives this year alone.
It culminated with the drive-by shootings of three members of the 5,000-strong "14K" triad. With business in Macau down nearly 50% because of the violence, the government and the Macau police, in conjunction with the Chinese government, brokered a "cease fire" in the face of the Hong Kong handover to China. Lai planned his escape from Macau for several years. He initially applied for landed immigrant status at the Canadian High Commission in Hong Kong in early 1994. He purchased a house on Fraserview Drive in Southeast Vancouver for $515,000 on June 9, 1994.
Immigration officials in Hong Kong identified Lai as a triad member which would have excluded him from entry into the country. However, in early 1996, Lai's lawyer informed Immigration he was withdrawing the application.
He then travelled to Los Angeles where he applied through the Canadian Consulate. The application was approved without any Canadian immigration officer checking with the Hong Kong office, which would have identified him as a triad leader. In October 1996, Lai brought his family to Vancouver.
Sources in immigration told me at the time there were only two possibilities for Lai being approved to enter Canada: gross incompetence or corruption.
The beating Robillard took in the media and in the House from Reform Immigration critic John Reynolds prompted the commission of the Bissett report in September of this year. Bissett, a respected former ambassador, tabled his report with the minister in late October. In the 22-page document, Bissett describes an immigration post trying to justify its existence in 1994. Then, with the appointment of a new program manager, Ian Rankin, actively soliciting new applicants, the post became so overworked by mid-1996 that Lai slipped through the cracks.
From the outset, when overwork is used as an excuse for a screw-up by the government, I'm immediately skeptical.
Bissett outlines the considerable increase in applications received by the Los Angeles office in the wake of Rankin's appointment. According to Bissett, by May 1997, the office was dealing with over 2,500 active files. Of these, less than 150 were from residents of the U.S. In other words, officials were processing applications in Los Angeles with almost 95% from overseas.
Lai's application was processed by a U.S. citizen hired by our consulate in 1988. According to Bissett's report, this employee asked another officer to run Lai's file past immigration officers in Hong Kong. This apparently was not done.
Had Hong Kong been asked about Lai, reams of information would have been provided to Los Angeles and Lai's application refused. This is the essential point of the whole matter. Why was this not done?
Bissett's report doesn't answer the most important question and in fact, the very raison d'etre for his inquiry.
Nor does Bissett answer how Lai's application got approved in three months when the average in Los Angeles at the time was nine months. Especially in view of the "overwork" excuse, this seems to be a salient question which strikes at the heart of the matter.
Robillard is hoping the Bissett report and its conclusion of overwork, will bring to an end the criticism of the Lai matter.
Gross incompetence or corruption? The question still remains unanswered.
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