The Canadian Immigration Policy and The Racial Discrimination

The laissez-faire approach to immigration that Canada had inherited over its lifetime began to fade away in 1884. British Columbia had become very concerned with the number of single male Chinese that had emigrated to the province since the 1860's when the American gold fields dried up. Thus, the provincial government took political action over the next year to finally impose a head tax of $50, on each Chinese immigrant who flocked to the region. In addition, Clifford Sifton, "a struggling young lawyer from Winnipeg and the youngest member of the Cabinet of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, was obsessed by a dream of promoting Canada's prosperity by developing the prairies with pioneer farmers". Sifton's plans when unveiled were daring, unorthodox, and in many ways ruthless. He had a vision of the ideal farmer for the Canadian prairies and he thought, "that a stalwart peasant in a sheepskin coat, born on the soil, whose forebears have been farmers for ten generations, with a stout wife and a half dozen children, is good quality".

But, not everyone in Canada was as quick to welcome the Ukrainian newcomers in sheepskin coats as Sifton was. So, to add to the crisis of trying to develop western Canada the, "new settlers were not welcomed warmly by established Canadians, who derisively referred to the Ukrainians as Sifton's Sheepskins and Scum of the Empire". These events were the birth of racial discrimination within the context of Canada's immigration policy and the immigrant fiasco it fueled from 1896 to 1914. But, there were three other forthcoming events that would create and shape the Canadian immigration and discrimination fiasco.

The White Canada policy and the ignorant racial discrimination of Chinese immigrants were the heart and soul of racial discrimination in regards to Canada's immigration policy. "The White Canada immigration policy abandoned only i... Immigration to Canada Immigration to Canada is the process by which people migrate to Canada to reside in that country. The majority of these individuals become Canadian citizens.

After 1947, domestic immigration law and policy went through major changes, most notably with the Immigration Act, 1976, and the current Immigration and Refugee Protection Act in 2002. Canadian immigration policies are still evolving. As recently as 2008, Citizenship and Immigration Canada has made significant changes to streamline the steady flow of immigrants. Those changes included reduced professional categories for skilled immigration as well as caps for immigrants in various categories. In the year from July 2015 to June 2016, there were 320,932 immigrants to Canada.