Tamils asked to post bond for migrants

amils are appealing to their community to post thousands of dollars in bonds for about 150 of 492 migrants who arrived here by ship and have no family in Canada.

Members of the community are preparing for the migrants’ release in the next couple weeks and are searching for Tamils to post bonds ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 for each release.

“Some of these people have no family members in Canada,” said David Poopalapillai, of the Canadian Tamil Congress.

“We have appealed to the community to come forward and take this task.”
He said those who post bonds have to meet conditions imposed by an Immigration and Refugee Board, which has only released three women with children and another woman.
The migrants have been detained for more than five weeks at B.C. detention centres as immigration officials try to determine their identities. They arrived here on Aug. 13 on MV Sun Sea.
Immigration officials are concerned members of the Tamil Tigers terrorist group may be hiding among the migrants.

Officials have not found any Tigers and the migrants should be released, Poopalapillai said.

Meanwhile, a plan by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney to deter the mass smuggling of migrants by detaining them for longer periods was rejected on Wednesday.

Under Kenney’s draft plan, migrants would have to wait two weeks for a detention hearing, rather than the current 48 hours.

And Toronto police said they’re still the break-in at the congress office in Scarborough earlier this month in which computer information about the migrants was stolen.