Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to the bill because the bill does not address the real problems in immigration that are reported to every one of us as MPs almost on a daily basis. I know some members in the House are in rural constituencies and they really are not exposed to the sorts of problems with the immigration system experienced by members of parliament in urban centres.
I can give some examples of some of the problems in the Vancouver area that simply are not addressed by the content of the bill. I am sure many of the members have seen the news items on television where up to 80 Honduran drug dealers are arrested at one time in Vancouver in drug sweeps. These 80 Hondurans are criminal refugee claimants. They are not genuine immigrants. They are people who have come through our borders using false passports, using false documentation and they go straight to the drug dealing trade on the streets of Vancouver and east Vancouver. Some of them are as young as 12 and they are here illegally.
The minister has done absolutely nothing in her bill to deal with that type of problem. In fact, we are so stupid in Canada that we even brought a social worker from Honduras to look after all these illegals who are already here taking our welfare payments, taking free medical care, taking free dental care and all the other benefits that hardworking Canadians are entitled to while they deal drugs on the streets of Vancouver and we cannot do anything to get rid of them.
These very same people are arrested over and over again every week. They are taken down to the court house and within an hour they are back on the streets. There is an example of a major problem in the Vancouver area that has been completely ignored in the bill by the minister.
We have the same sort of problem in Vancouver every night with illegals where up to half of those arrested in the Vancouver area on any night of the week are illegal refugee claimants. Imagine that, half of those arrested in Vancouver every night of the week are illegal refugee claimants. That gives members an idea of the size of the problem, the strain on our police forces, the strain on our welfare system, the court system, all the issues that flow from that one problem of porous borders, our inability to keep criminals out of the country.
Some of the refugee claimants who say they are in Canada because they would be persecuted in their own country—