Two men accused of organizing the MV Sun Sea's journey to Canada appear in B.C. Provincial Court in Vancouver on Wednesday, May 16, 2012. It was their first appearance on that charge. Lesly Jana Emmanuel is on the left, with Kunarobinson Christhurajah seated beside him. Jane Wolsak

Men charged with helping to organize MV Sun Sea voyage appear in court
SUNNY DHILLON
VANCOUVER— From Thursday’s Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, May. 16, 2012 9:00PM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, May. 16, 2012 9:09PM EDT

Dressed in red prison-issued clothing, listening intently as a Tamil interpreter translated the proceedings, two men charged with helping organize the MV Sun Sea’s voyage into Canada made a brief appearance in Vancouver Provincial Court.

Kunarobinson Christhurajah and Lesly Jana Emmanuel were each charged this week with one count of organizing entry into Canada contrary to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Both men face penalties of life in prison and/or a $1-million fine.

Mr. Christhurajah and Mr. Emmanuel did not address the court during their first appearance Wednesday. The men stood behind a glass barrier in the prisoner’s box and followed the hearing through the interpreter. They remain in custody and will be back in court June 5 for a bail hearing.

Police and military personnel wear surgical masks as they board the MV Sun Sea after it was escorted into CFB Esquimalt in Colwood, B.C.,Friday, Aug. 13, 2010. Two people have been charged with helping to smuggle a ship full of Tamil migrants into Canada. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

Two charged with helping to smuggle migrants to Canada aboard ship
By: The Canadian Press
Posted: 4:31 PM | Comments: 0 (including replies) | Last Modified: 4:37 PM

Police and military personnel wear surgical masks as they board the MV Sun Sea after it was escorted into CFB Esquimalt in Colwood, B.C.,Friday, Aug. 13, 2010. Two people have been charged with helping to smuggle a ship full of Tamil migrants into Canada. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

VANCOUVER – Two people have been charged with helping to smuggle a ship full of Tamil migrants into Canada.

Lesly Jana Emmanuel and Kunarobinson Christhurajah are accused of organizing and aiding in the operation that brought 492 Tamils by boat to British Columbia’s coast.

The rusty MV Sun Sea landed off Victoria in August 2010 with the refugee claimants on board.

The court indictment against the pair says they planned their crimes between August 2009 and August 2010 in Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Thailand.

The Canadian government has launched an extradition request for a third man charged with similar offences and arrested in France.

Six men from the ship remain in detention almost two years after they landed, while 19 passengers have been issued deportation orders and six people have been accepted as refugees.

Richmond agent stole immigrants’ ICBC payments
By Jason Proctor CBC News Posted: May 11, 2012 11:33 AM PT Last Updated: May 11, 2012 1:33 PM PT
A B.C. provincial court judge sentenced a Richmond insurance agent to one year in jail Thursday for stealing cash from dozens of customers’ insurance payments to pay for his trips to a casino.

Ka Chun Chan, 48, preyed on Chinese immigrants with very little command of English. According to an agreed statement of facts he claimed he took the money to maintain a gambling habit.

He instructed clients to make cheques payable to him rather than to the Insurance Corporation of B.C.
‘Are they going to get the message from Mr. Chan that Canada is a corrupt place?
—Judge Ron Fratkin

The scheme began to unravel when ICBC started notifying clients their Autoplan premiums were in arrears or unpaid.

In the meantime — dozens of motorists with high-end vehicles were driving around Lower Mainland roads without insurance.

Dr. Joel Ray, a researcher on immigrant health at The Keenan Research Centre at St. Michael's Hospital, poses for a photo on a bridge between the research centre and the hospital in Toronto. Michelle Siu/The Globe and Mail

Health Care
How a simple translation tool is helping doctors and immigrants communicate
Dakshana Bascaramurty
Globe and Mail Update
Published Friday, May. 04, 2012 7:05PM EDT
Last updated Saturday, May. 05, 2012 12:20AM EDT

Now in use across the country, the guide is a simple tool – a computer-based list of phonetic pronunciations of medical symptoms and questions in the 15 most-spoken languages in Ontario – but it addresses a major obstacle that immigrants face when accessing health care.

“In the emergency department, if somebody comes in with a serious problem and there’s nobody there that speaks that language,” says Dr. Ray, 44, a clinician and researcher at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, “you immediately have a barrier to the information exchange that’s critical to finding out what’s wrong.”

(…)
In one recent study, he identified a Caucasian bias in birth-weight standards used in most hospitals that could cause ethnic-minority newborns to be labelled as underweight. His revisions may reduce the need for unnecessary follow-ups, tests and worry among immigrant mothers.

In another study, he outlined the elevated risk for gestational diabetes for immigrant women, and called for improved ethnic classification (for example, “South Asian” instead of just “Asian”) so practitioners can evaluate patients more accurately.

Doctors and nurses are on the front lines with immigrant patients, Dr. Ray says, so hospitals should be ground zero for cultural innovation.

(…)
Do you know an immigration innovator? The Globe would like to hear from you – nominate an innovator here.

Immigrants should learn English to join civic culture

Harry Reid

By: | TriCities.com 
Published: April 08, 2012

Canada was settled by both English and French. It had no choice but to be a bilingual nation. By contrast, the United States was originally blessed with a single common language.

Canada has experienced social unrest, threats of separation and a referendum that came within a hair’s breadth of breaking up the nation.

One of the major reasons for America’s great success as the world’s first “universal nation,” for its astonishing and unmatched capacity for assimilating immigrants, has been that an automatic part of acculturation was the acquisition of English.

When it was proposed to make English the “official” language, to be used in business with the government, tax forms, court proceedings, ballot boxes, etc., the best the Senate could do was pass an amendment to the immigration bill declaring English to be the “national” language. Even that was too much for Senate leader Harry Reid who called the resolution racist.