Canada’s Immigration Policy from 1914 to 2000

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Canada’s Immigration Policy from 1914 to 2000

Canada’s immigration policy has got fairer from the middle of the century on to the end of the century. At the start of the century, Canada’s immigration policy, Canada’s immigration policy wasn’t fair but as the century comes to an end, Canada’s immigration policy became entirely different. There were a lot of racism in the first half of the century but most of this racism in the immigration policy disappeared from 1967 and on. As the years go by, Canada’s immigration policy gets a lot reasonable.

The period of 1914 to 1939, Canada’s immigration policy got very unfair. Changes were made to the Immigration Act in 1914 that allowed the rejection of anyone from any race that was deemed unsuitable for Canada’s requirements. Also, in that same year, the Komagata Maru came to the coast of Vancouver. It was a ship that carried many from Punjab, India. The ship wasn’t allowed to dock and passengers weren’t allowed to disembark off the ship. The ship hadn’t sailed directly to B.C. from India so only 24 passengers were allowed to disembark; most of them were doctors or Canadian citizens already. Another act to keep out unwanted immigrants from Canada was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1923. This act came into effect on July 1st, 1923. It banned all Chinese immigrants from entering Canada, except merchants, diplomats and foreign students. Before the Chinese Exclusion Act was put into place, the Chinese had to pay a head tax of $500 just to get into the country. The numbers of Japanese immigrants were also restricted. The Canadian government restricted only 150 Japanese immigrants to come to Canada in a year. In 1925, the government relaxed restrictions on immigrants coming from many countrie...

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...a’s immigration policy becoming fairer. From 1991-1997, 607 Rwandan refugees were allowed into Canada. From 1992-1997, close to 13,000 thousand Bosnian refugees were allowed into Canada. The acceptance of these refugees from Bosnia and Rwanda show how much Canada’s immigration policy has changed since 1914, when many immigrants and refugees trying to enter Canada were rejected.

Canada’s immigration wasn’t fair at the start of the century. Immigrants and refugees weren’t allowed in Canada. Many restrictions were placed to prevent immigrants to come to Canada. Starting from when the immigration policy of Canada was made “colour-blind” in 1967, Canada’s immigrants started to come from all over the world, especially from Asia. The allowance of more immigrants as a result of the change of immigration policy in 1967 caused Canada’s immigration policy to get fairer.

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