The dramatic rescue of 155 Tamil asylum claimants off of Newfoundland — August 1986
The Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 has recently posted an article recalling the events of the summer of 1986 when 155 Tamils from Sri Lanka were rescued off of the coast of Newfoundland. The bloody civil war in that country had erupted a few years earlier and many of its citizens had fled the country with the hopes of finding asylum elsewhere.
Read the post from the Canadian Immigration Museum.
The Canadian reaction at the time was decidedly mixed—many called for the government to accept the refugee claimants while others, citing the fact that they had embarked to Canada from West Germany, insisted that they were not legitimate refugees in need of Canada’s protection. The two articles from the Globe and Mail embedded below provide examples of the two perspectives.
This event sparked intense national debate regarding border control, irregular maritime arrivals, and the processing capacity of Canada’s refugee system, directly influencing subsequent legislative changes.
The “new immigration legislation” referred to by Dr. Horner in the second article was in the form of Bill C-55, introduced in May 1987 and enacted in 1989, that introduced a strict, two-stage screening process to obstensibly filter out claims deemed to be unfounded before they were allowed a full hearing before the Immigration and Refugee Board. The debate on the changes was intense, with substantial opposition from civil society groups.
A second piece of legislation, Bill C-84 (introduced August 11, 1987 in a Parliament recalled for the purpose) allowed for the detention of refugees without proper identification and for the deportation of those posing a threat to security. This second piece of legislation was introduced following a mass maritime arrival of Sikhs in July 1987.
