Immigration Policy

For three hundred years European and then Canadian makers of immigration policy regarded the northern part of North America as an empty land waiting to be occupied by white settlers and made productive by their labour. The fact that this vast expanse was already inhabited by aboriginal peoples, a number of whom formed semi-permanent farming communities, was simply discounted since it did not conform to received notions of land occupation and industry. Over the centuries, a sometimes small, sometimes substantial, immigration to Canada took place involving people of diverse origins: at first French, then British and continental European, and finally Asian, African, and Latin American. The state in its various guises inevitably tried to control the number and type of immigrants, but the limits of policy were revealed time and again as other factors and other agents were more successful in shaping the flow of people to this country.