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Thursday, July 27, 2000

CHINA BOUND: MORE MIGRANTS SHIPPED HOME
(Reg Hampton) - Ninety Chinese migrants are on board a 747 jumbo jet, heading back to China. The eighty-four men and six women were bused from a Prince George jail to the Prince George airport to be loaded onto the chartered Tower Air jet. It's the second largest deportation of migrants since they arrived by the boatload last summer, and it's only adding to the mounting costs to Canadian taxpayers. The bill for Thursday's removal is 700-thousand dollars. The cost of the May 10th removal of another 90 migrants was 500-thousand dollars. And it's been costing two hundred dollars per person per day to incarcerate the migrants for a total of 36-million dollars, so far. Victor Wong of the Vancouver Association of Chinese Canadians says chartering the jet was an extra expensive that wasn't necessary and will actually put the migrants at risk. He says most of the migrants requested individual, more anonymous, flights to try to avoid the fate of the migrants who were deported on May 10th, who are allegedly being detained in a jail in Fujian province. But Immigration Canada countered that chartered flights are used for increased security. But for these migrants, the debate is over. Thursday afternoon, the jumbo jet refuelled in Whitehorse, its final Canadian stop. One year since the migrants arrived in decrepit ships they're flying home, to an uncertain future back in China. Immigration says that another one hundred of the migrants are "ready to go" and will flown home as soon as the Chinese government gives the word.
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