The organization that provides legal aid in British Columbia in Canada says it's running out of money in its efforts to represent the Tamil migrants who arrived in August, CBC News reported yesterday.

"The society's immigration funding is limited," Legal Services Society manager Rod Holloway said in a letter Thursday to lawyers who have been representing the migrants.

"The arrival of … Tamils who are currently detained has placed us in a position where funding their detention reviews … will, very shortly, exhaust our current resources allocated to immigration matters," he said.

Most of the 492 migrants who arrived on Vancouver Island on Aug. 13 aboard the MV Sun Sea remain in detention in the Vancouver area.

The funding crunch could leave the migrants without legal representation at detention hearings.

"The Legal Services Society will be considering this issue and may be required to restrict services … to ensure the society remains within budget," Holloway said in the letter.

The primary issue in the hearings is the difficulty in establishing each migrant's identity to the satisfaction of the Canada Border Services Agency.

The CBSA is concerned that some migrants could be members of the Tamil Tigers, an organization banned in Canada as being terrorist.

The CBSA also is bearing extraordinary expenses by keeping the migrants in detention.

The Immigration Review Board said the CBSA is being charged more than $88,000 a day — about $200 per migrant — for a total of more than $3 million for their 34 days of incarceration so far.