Suren Karththikesu, who was among the 492 Sri Lankan migrants that arrived in Canada aboard the MV Sun Sea in 2010 and filed a refugee claim to stay in the country, is photographed in Burnaby, B.C., on Thursday August 6, 2015. DARRYL DYCK FOR THE GLOBE AND MAILDARRYL DYCK/The Globe and Mail
Is it possible to people-smuggle yourself? Or is human smuggling something that always involves some sort of cash exchange, a quid pro quo?
On Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada dealt sensibly with a group of Tamil refugee claimants from Sri Lanka.
In 2010, during the gruesome Sri Lankan civil war, 492 Tamils left their country, went to Thailand and paid money to some Thais (ranging from $20,000 to $30,000 each) to travel on a boat called MV Sun Sea, to British Columbia. The Thai crew took their money, abandoned the not very seaworthy ship and left the passengers not far from the Asian shore. About a dozen people with some knowledge of what to do with a ship took charge, and assigned themselves the less bad cabins. Somehow they got across the Pacific Ocean, and to the coast of B.C. in three months, where all on board promptly made refugee claims.
The Canadian government charged the people who had taken the initiative on board with "trafficking in persons." But Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin exercised her common sense when the case eventually came to the Supreme Court, and all her colleagues agreed with her.
Of course, the Sun Sea passengers hadn't used the orthodox ways to make refugee claims, but many of them didn't succeed anyway. Instead, most were found to be deserving of conditional removal orders, not asylum. The wife of one of the enterprising leaders on the Sun Sea, however, has won her refugee claim.
The Supreme Court was right to doubt that the group who leaped into the breach on the ship were engaged in "organized crime," or human smuggling or seeking "financial or other material benefit." The judges found the law's wording to be overbroad, and they referred the cases back to the Immigration and Refugee Board.
A similarly paradoxical state of affairs is being played out every day in the Mediterranean Sea, rather than on the coasts of Canada. The countries of Europe consider the refugee claims of those who have arrived in the continent, but send out Frontex on the sea to do its best not to let refugee claimants set foot in Europe, where they could have a chance of successfully asserting those claims.
The Western world juggles its principles and hopes for the best.