completely unrelated

Remember back in 99 when we uncovered four boatloads of Fujians attempiting to be smuggled into Canada? And how virtually all of them were denied refugee status? Well, it turns out that we did so in gross violation of international law.

See, the UNHCR (that's high comission on refugees) regulations for assesment of refugee claims states that each claim must be examined case-by-case and objectively to determine the validity of that claim according to the official definition of a refugee. But, (yeah, you knew there'd be a but) these boats arrived in BC at a time when Canada was engaged in intense diplomatic courting of China, due in no small measure to their impending entrance to the WTO (and heading down the road to being the world's biggest economy) and so it was important for Canada not to embarass China on the basis of human rights abuses by drawing attention to them, despite the fact that it is the cause of most successful refugee claims among Chinese in Canada. In other words, instead of complying with inernational law, we turned away 573 people claiming refugee status not because they didn't meet the requirements, but for political (and economic) reasons alone.

So see, we're not the high and mighty internationalists we like to claim to be.

In completely unrelated news,

You have a mysterious kiss. Your partner never
knows what you're going to come up with next;
this creates great excitement and arousal never
knowing what to expect. And it's sure to end
in a kiss as great as your mystery.


What kind of kiss are you?
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