Immigration and Exclusion in Canada (PDF)

**Immigration and Exclusion** *"Canadians understand that diversity is our strength. We know that Canada has succeeded---culturally, politically, economically---because of our diversity, not in spite of it."* -- Justin Trudeau, Current Prime Minister *"Canada is the homeland of equality, justice,...

**Immigration and Exclusion** *"Canadians understand that diversity is our strength. We know that Canada has succeeded---culturally, politically, economically---because of our diversity, not in spite of it."* -- Justin Trudeau, Current Prime Minister *"Canada is the homeland of equality, justice, and tolerance."* - Kim Campbell, Former Prime Minister (and only woman) *"Canada has always embraced immigration; the country was built on it and depends on it for our continued growth and vibrancy...."* \- Kelly McParland, award winning Canadian Journalist Well, that\'s true\... for some Canadians whose immigrant ancestors sailed smoothly to new soil with offers of land, wealth, and happiness. However, many immigrants, or ancestors of immigrants haven't lived in that version of Canada. Excluding unwanted immigrants is literally foundational to the Canadian identity, which is bizarre considering how proudly we claim to be multicultural. Blatant xenophobia, through the decades, has even been codified in law at the expense of the Irish in 1847 (pre-confederation), the Chinese in 1885, the Sikhs in 1914, the Jews in 1939, the Japanese in the 1940s, and the Haitians in 1973. Our modern "go back to where you came from" cultural identity crisis exists because of centuries of xenophobic fears and learned hatred. According to a recent study by Maclean's Magazine, a full third of Canadians hold negative views toward at least one specific ethnic group in our country. This distaste is especially pronounced when it comes to newer immigrants: only 4% of Canadians hold negative views against immigrants who landed more than 50 years ago, as opposed to 10% who feel the negatively toward anyone who arrived in the last 15 years. 10% of Canadians also hold negative views toward refugees who arrived within the last three years. Some might argue that 10% isn't a large number; but it's growing. According to Statistics Canada, hate crimes against Muslims grew 253 per cent from 2015 to 2019, including the murder of six Muslim men in a Quebec City Mosque in 2017, while hate crimes (actually reported to police) reached a record-high 2669 in 2020. That is the highest number of police-reported hate crimes since Statistics Canada began tracking data in 2009. Following Confederation, Canada began to develop its own national immigration policies separate from those of Britain. Between 1869 and the early 1930s, Canada received over 100,000 immigrants a year. Our "open-door policy" helped attract a diverse group of arrivals that started with British and American agriculturalists followed by Belgians, Dutch, Scandinavians, Swiss, Finns, Russians, Austro-Hungarians, Germans, Ukrainians, and Poles. Close to the bottom of the list of desired immigrants came those who were, in both the public and the government\'s minds, less assimilable and less desirable such as Italians, Slavs, Greeks and Middle Easterners. At the very bottom of Canada's immigration list were Asians, Jews and Roma/Gypsies -- the only ones to be directly distinguished by religion/culture, and Blacks -- the only ones to be distinguished specifically by skin colour and not country of origin. Not all new immigrants were welcomed with a warm embrace. 1869 -- 1953: "UN"OFFICIAL BARRIERS FOR BLACKS Early in our history there was concern among immigration authorities about how to be functionally anti-Black without being legitimately anti-Black "on paper." Since much of Canada's recruitment of immigrants was done by mail, it was difficult for immigration officials to discern the race of potential immigrants. In U.S. cities, for example, where there were no Canadian immigration agents present to discriminate openly, Canadian immigration officials would write to the local (presumably white) American postmasters to ask whether an applicant was Black before processing their application. When this practice didn't keep black immigrants out as effectively as the government hoped, the immigration act was changed to include the "climate clause" which essentially stated that moving to Canada would be unhealthy for people who originated in tropical areas or from the African continent because their bodies were not suited to the climatic conditions of Canada. Though it didn't specifically say "no Black immigrants," in 1912, Robert Borden's immigration superintendent stated that "it is to be hoped that climatic conditions will prove unsatisfactory to those new Black settlers, and that the fertile lands of the West will be left to be cultivated by the white race only." The use of climate as a clumsy way of curbing Black immigration was dropped from the immigration act in 1953. 1885 -- 1947: CHINESE BUILD THE COUNTRY BUT BREAK FAMILY BONDS To avoid spoiling Canada-China relations, the federal government could not outright forbid Chinese immigration. Therefore, Canada passed the Chinese Immigration Act in 1885, which put a hefty head tax on Chinese immigrants in the hopes that this would deter them from entering Canada. No matter how long an immigrant planned to stay in Canada (whether it be to work for a few years, or to live indefinitely) all were forced to pay \$500 in order to enter Canada. No other ethnic group had to pay this kind of tax at the time or ever after. The head tax proved to be profitable for the federal government and helped pay for the expansion of the railroad from the Atlantic to the Pacific, but it didn't entirely stifle the flow of Chinese newcomers. In 1923, the government passed the new Chinese Immigration Act, referred to as the Chinese Exclusion Act, which outright banned most forms of Chinese immigration. During the exclusionary period, fewer than 50 Chinese immigrants were allowed entry to Canada and the Chinese-Canadian population decreased by 25%. Not only did the law ban Chinese immigration, it also intentionally disrupted family life and stunted community growth by preventing many wives and families from joining their husbands or fathers in Canada until after 1947. 1905 -- 1947: WHITE AND ENGLISH FOR THE WEST PM Laurier\'s Minister of the Interior from 1896-1905, Clifford Sifton, was eager to populate western Canada with farmers in order to stimulate the economy and help pay the national debt. The government offered free homesteads to qualified applicants. Canadian immigration authorities rated newcomers according to their race, perceived hardiness and farming ability: If English speaking immigrants were not available, other white immigrants would do. White immigrants from Eastern Europe (Italians, Portuguese, Slavs, Greeks, Syrians, and Jews, etc.) were reluctantly accepted in large numbers, but Black and Asian immigration outright discouraged. Then, however, during World War I and II, large scale immigration hysteria broke out across Canada directed largely at immigrants born in "enemy countries;" though even those who had been born in now allied countries weren't excluded from the hysteria and racism if they weren't entirely white and English. Despite Canadian military manpower needs, British and Canadian authorities felt that, where possible, foreign born people belonged in foreign armies and the likelihood of someone being a spy for an enemy country increased if they had not been born in Canada. Many people who had moved to Canada during Laurier's time as PM, many of whom has been recruited and encourage directly to move to Canada, found themselves labelled "enemy aliens," had their voting rights taken away, and were even put in prison/work camps, simply because they had been born in, or were the children of someone who had been born in, a different country. 1960s -- Today: THE GROWTH OF MULTICULTURALISM Until the 1960s, Canada chose its immigrants on the basis of their racial categorization rather than the individual merits of the applicant. The last legal signs of racial discrimination in immigration were gone from Canadian immigration legislation and regulations by the late 1960s. This opened Canada\'s doors to many of those who would previously have been rejected as undesirable. In 1971, for the first time in Canadian history, the majority of those immigrating into Canada were of non-European ancestry. This has been the case every year since. As a result, Canada is not just a multicultural society, it is also a multiracial society to a degree unimaginable to earlier generations of Canadians.