Many of the migrants are legitimate refugees

Prime Minister Stephen Harper tells us his government will change the law to "to deter illegal immigration, in response to the arrival of Tamil refugees" in B.C.

He claims current legislation does not go far enough to deter human smuggling. His government will amend the Immigration Act "to ensure we deter this kind of behaviour ... which for the vast majority of Canadians is completely unacceptable."

However, 30 of those recent ethnic Tamil Sri Lankans have already been released because it appears they might have legitimate refugee claims and do not represent a threat of any kind.

Further, most of the 76 Tamils who arrived last fall on a previous ship are reported "now living in Toronto," presumably because they also turned out to be legal refugee claimants.

So Harper is being disingenuous, distorting the truth, when he rails against the "illegal immigration" of these refugees. Their refugee claims are a legal form of immigration under Canadian (and international) law.

They also are not "queue jumpers" because Canada, like most nations, processes refugees separately from other immigrants. And legal immigration is highly acceptable to the vast majority of Canadians because that's how we or our forebears got here.

As to so-called "human smugglers," let's not forget, if they were smuggling refugees out of Nazi Germany or the former Iron Curtain countries, we would consider them heroes.