Canadian Immigration Essays Example

“Sifton and the government may only have reflected their times, but Canadian immigration policy and public opinion were nevertheless racist.” This quotation from The Canadian Encyclopedia succinctly sums up the attitude towards the immigrants that entered Canada from the time of the Confederation until the first World War. The nation was distinctly selective about what race and resident country an immigrant was native to. At this time in history, the government sought settlement in the plains but wanted to determine exactly who those settlers would be. It was reflection of British imperial policy and was distinctly biased towards the wave of Irish immigration. How the Canadian government could be so staunchly for only white, English-speaking individuals from the British Isles is absolutely mind-boggling.
It appears the policy to settle that area of Canada was forced upon the government by the expansion of business interests for obvious reasons. The government, however, instituted an extremely narrow checklist of what immigrants were considered to be acceptable. The Canadian Encyclopedia states, “At the very bottom came Jews, Asians, Roma people and Black persons.” This is reference to the standards Canada set for its immigration policy. The top of the list were the British, the Americans and the French. Did the government not realize or were not concerned with the development of a society that was insular and segregated? Probably not, as there was an even a program implemented to recruit former residents of Canada to return home, rather than take in immigrants from another country. That kind of narrow-minded view is utterly astonishing to this writer. Not that they could not “get away with it” so to speak, but for the fact that it is
difficult to point the finger at other nations for racial targeting when that very same country is performing or has conducted the exact same thing under a different umbrella.

Bibliography

Ontario, Canada. Exploring Ontario. Queen’s Printer for Ontario. Web. 2009.
<http://www.ontarioimmigration.ca/en/about/OI_ABOUT_PEOPLE_HISTORY.html>
Richmond, Anthony H., Immigration and Pluralism in Canada. International Migration
Review. The Center of New York Studies, Inc., 1969.
Troper, Harold. Immigration, The Canadian Encyclopedia. Web. September 26, 2014.
<http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/en/article/immigration/>.