Smuggling sentence too lenient, critics say

A man who smuggled a nine-year-old boy from India into Canada was fined just $5,000 - a sentence upheld on appeal this month but one critics say sets an excessively lenient precedent.
Shamsh Dhalla, 51, landed at Toronto's Pearson International Airport on Nov. 24, 2004, with a young boy in tow. He counselled the boy to provide a false name and to show a fake passport to customs officers, though Mr. Dhalla later claimed he was tricked into smuggling the child into Canada.
Suspicious customs officials uncovered the ruse, and Mr. Dhalla was later charged under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act with an offence known as counselling misrepresentation. The boy, whose real parents have not been located, became a ward of the Children's Aid Society, and he went on to make a refugee claim as an "abandoned child."
The case provides insight into the myriad and daring schemes that smugglers in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia devise to help people, minors included, enter Canada illegally.
26/04/07 Marina Jimenez/Globe and Mail, Canada

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Categories: Foreign Apr 2007