Systematic Discrimination in Canadian Immigration (Historical)

Systematic Discrimination in Canadian Immigration (Historical)

Today I want to take a closer look at a part of Canadian history than Canadians don’t like to talk about. There are significant spans of time in Canadian history where our government created and upheld some very racist laws pertaining to refugees, immigrants, and immigration. Some of these laws were very overt and blatantly discriminatory while others were more subtly non-inclusive. As Canadians we should be ashamed of these terrible laws that are a part of our past. However, that shame should not cause us to sweep these horrible bits of history under the rug because we need to remember them in order to ensure that they never happen again.

Here are some examples for Canada’s past that we should keep in mind and prevent them from happening again:

1. The Chinese Exclusion Act (1885-1923)

This act “imposed a head tax on Chinese immigrants of $50, [which] increased to $100 in 1900 and to $500 in 1903” (Canadian Council for Refugees 2000). During the years of this act “more than $22 million were collected in head tax payments” (Canadian Council for Refugees 2000).

2. The Chinese Immigration Act (1923-1947)

This act meant “almost total prohibition of Chinese immigration in Canada” (Canadian Council for Refugees 2000).

3. Order in Council (1908)

This was known as the “’continuous passage rule’ which had the effect of excluding from immigration people who could not make a direct journey to Canada” (Canadian Council for Refugees 2000). Who were they discriminating against and trying to keep out? Reportedly, “immigrants from India, since there was at the time no direct voyage from India” (Canadian Council for Refugees 2000) to Canada. This rule did not apply to Europeans however, except in the 1920’s when it was used to discriminate against Eastern Europeans (Canadian Council for Refugees 2000).

4. Order in Council (1911)

This “prohibited ‘any immigrant belonging to the Negro race, which race is deemed unsuitable to the climate and requirements of Canada’” (Canadian Council for Refugees 2000). This order was “never proclaimed” (Canadian Council for Refugees 2000) but the government clearly tried to discriminate against immigrants from the African continent in even proposing such a law.

5. Prohibition of Immigration by Doukhobors, Mennonites and Hutterites (1919-1922)

What reason did the government give for prohibiting these individuals? Apparently it was their “’peculiar habits, modes of life and methods of holding property’” (Canadian Council for Refugees 2000). Apparently, communal agrarian communities were against Canadian values at the time. I suspect this had to do with the Bolsheviks in Russia at the time and the fear that Communism would spread, which ties back into the information in my previous post: discrimination towards immigrants often happens during troubling times, and immigrants are the target because they are convenient scapegoats.