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As Toronto's Chinese population ballooned in the 1980s, social workers saw a growing number of clients running into trouble with Canada's justice system because of language and cultural barriers.

There were the "imported brides" afraid to leave an abusive relationship, for example. And the non-English-speakers who were charged with obstruction of justice or shoplifting because they couldn't communicate with police.

At the same time, advocates for an ethnic legal clinic saw their request for funding denied because the government feared setting a costly precedent – a decision later overturned by the Law Society of Upper Canada, which governed the legal aid plan at the time.

And so the Metro Toronto Chinese & Southeast Asian Legal Clinic was born, in 1987.

As it celebrates its 20th birthday this week, the clinic remains one of Ontario's smallest, with just two lawyers and three support staff. Yet it serves 3,000 clients annually from the GTA's rapidly growing Chinese, Vietnamese, Laotian and other Asian communities.

People who have been helped by the clinic will mark the anniversary by taking part in a Law Society forum and reception tomorrow.

Soo Chuck Yong says he owes his life to its advocacy. Soo arrived in Canada from Guangzhou in 1991 as a refugee, one of many Chinese dissidents seeking asylum after the Tiananmen Square massacre.

He was rejected for permanent residency because of an ailing kidney. Without that status, he couldn't be placed on the transplant list.

The clinic took his case to the federal court, which recognized that Soo's Charter rights had been violated and agreed that if sent back to China he would probably die. After six years of legal wrangling, Soo, now 41, was finally accepted by Canada in 2003.

"I wouldn't have been here talking to you today without the help of the legal clinic," Soo said in Cantonese. "I just got my kidney transplant in May. The clinic has given me a second chance, a second life."

Kelvin Lai was shocked one day in 2004 when he arrived at the Chinese restaurant where he had been a chef for 15 years to find a sign on the door saying it was bankrupt.

Lai, 46, was sole breadwinner for his family of four. He and co-workers were owed almost $240,000 in salary and compensation from the company, which continued to run three other restaurants.

"The employer said, `If you like, go and sue us,'" recalled Lai, who speaks little English. "Then, they stopped answering our calls and ignored us. They did it because they knew we were vulnerable. We had no English and no money to hire a lawyer."

He was unemployed and destitute for 10 months. "Most of us were afraid to speak up and some gave up in the midst of the fight. But the clinic staff understood the Chinese culture and encouraged us to stand up and fight for justice."

In the end, although the labour ministry ordered only partial compensation, Lai got more than what he was initially offered and, more important, regained his pride.

Susan Eng's father Tong paid a $500 head tax (equal to two years' pay at the time) to come to Canada in 1919; he carried the head-tax certificate in his wallet until his death in 1970. He was just one of 81,000 Chinese immigrants who paid more than $23 million in total to Ottawa between 1885 and 1923.

It would take years to gain an apology for that and other discriminatory policies, including the Chinese Exclusion Act that later barred all but a handful of Chinese from Canada and prevented Tong from marrying until its repeal in 1947.

Those affected fought unsuccessfully for an apology and redress, until the legal clinic stepped in to advocate for them. While the legal efforts failed, they were nevertheless instrumental to winning an official apology from Ottawa last year, as well as individual compensation.