From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Immigration Policy/Harold Troper
Throughout the 1950s the racial assumptions on which so much of Canada’s immigration selectivity had been built gradually gave way, at least as far as ethnic Europeans were concerned. Even the wall of restriction against people of colour developed cracks. Anticipating the potential strength of former colonies, now United Nations members and possible trading partners, Canada in 1951 set aside a small, but nonetheless symbolically important, immigrant quota for its non-white Asian Commonwealth partners, India, Pakistan, and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Even if at the time the actual numbers of non-white immigrants admitted to Canada were low, the precedent of government-sanctioned admissions of visible minorities should not be minimized.
Change was in the wind elsewhere as well. A generally buoyant economy, a slowly enlightened spirit of racial tolerance among a new generation of Canadians, and a hawkish Cold War climate combined to erode many of the assumptions that had propped up the immigration policy of the day. As prosperity gradually returned to northern and western Europe in the late 1950s, the number of persons applying to emigrate from those regions fell off. The DP camps had been emptied of all but hard-core cases. The Iron Curtain kept migration from eastern Europe in check. Nonetheless, the Canadian demand for workers remained strong. Labour-intensive industries pressed for the right to look further afield in order to meet their needs and warned that, without immigration, continued Canadian prosperity was at risk.
But where could immigrants come from? In short order, business interests discovered a ready pool of workers in previously undesirable areas, southern Europe and Italy in particular. Proponents of Italian immigration had to overcome legislative restrictions on the admission of those still classed as enemy aliens as well as warnings from security personnel about the influence of the Italian Communist Party, the largest in the noncommunist world, and how it could use Italian immigration for subversion. But after some hesitation, the government responded positively. Restrictions against the admission of the old enemy were lifted, and, with security personnel on guard against communist infiltration, immigration offices were opened in Italy. If the government at first hoped to attract the more “Germanic” northern Italians, it was not successful. Almost immediately, southern Italians outnumbered northerners, and it was not long before immigration from that country outstripped all expectations, climbing into the hundreds of thousands by the mid-1960s. In the industrial heartland of southern Ontario and in urban Canada more generally, Italian labour came to dominate the thriving construction industry, just as an earlier generation of Jews had gone into the needle trades and Ukrainians had broken the hard prairie sod. Italians were soon followed by Greeks, Portuguese, and the peoples of the Balkan peninsula.
In 1956 the Canadian immigration authorities faced a new crisis: Hungarian refugees. After the Soviets crushed the Hungarian uprising, fugitives streamed westward into Austria. This first major European refugee crisis of the Cold War came at a fortuitous moment for Canada. Its economy was still buoyant, and the plight of exiled Hungarian anti-Communist “freedom fighters” moved the Canadian public. But Ottawa was slow to act. Again security personnel cautioned that the Soviets might use this refugee movement to introduce spies into unsuspecting Western countries. The government, for its part, seemed less concerned with spies than with dollars. Unlike other immigration movements since World War II, this one might require long-term public funding.
As the government dithered about costs, sympathy in the media and among the public for the Hungarian refugees grew. Non-government agencies pledged to meet the cost of resettlement, and on both sides of the political spectrum the press savaged the government for its inaction in the face of such need. Finally giving in, immigration authorities brushed aside security considerations and, on the minister’s authority, cut a path through their own red tape. The minister of immigration hurried to Vienna, followed by teams of officials assigned to secure the best of the Hungarian refugees before other countries did so.
The Hungarian resettlement program ran remarkably smoothly in spite of its shaky start. It was, however, anything but a routine exercise. Rather, immigration officials regarded it as a one-time exception to the Immigration Act. Normal procedures, including some medical and security checks, were sidestepped or postponed until after arrival in Canada. In short order almost 37,000 Hungarians were brought to this country, most to urban centres, which were by the mid-1950s the location of preference for most immigrants.
Change was in the air. The boom of the 1950s gave way early in the next decade to an economic slowdown, which in turn reduced the demand for imported labour. Active immigrant recruitment was curtailed, but it hardly mattered. The economic downturn impacted on Europe too and forced many would-be independent immigrants to put their plans on hold. Immigration numbers fell by half. But even as the volume of arrivals declined, immigration activity shifted to another arena: policy revision. In 1962, in line with wide-ranging human-rights initiatives at the provincial and federal levels and with an eye to enhancing Canada’s profile among the emerging countries of Africa and Asia, cabinet approved the lifting of racial and ethnic criteria for immigration applicants. But the government stopped short of universalizing the policy change. To assuage public concern, especially in British Columbia, about any sudden growth in Chinese and South Asian immigration, racial criteria remained in place for Asian family-reunification applications. Nevertheless, the direction of public policy was clear. Just as other applicants would henceforth be officially judged on the basis of individual skills or, more correctly, Canadian market needs, so too would the remaining racial and ethnic barriers to immigration have to be brought in line with more liberal thinking. It was only a matter of time.
Of course, a political commitment to the deracialization of regulations did not eliminate administrative discretion and therefore the ability of officials to apply the regulations in such a way as to ensure that de facto racial and ethnic discrimination continue under another guise, at least for a time. For example, in the early 1960s the resources of the immigration bureaucracy were almost exclusively concentrated in areas of traditional preference: Great Britain, the United States, and western Europe. By contrast, few on-site services were available and little money spent to promote Canadian immigration in the developing world. In 1960 Canada operated twenty-seven immigration offices outside North America; twenty-four were in Europe and three in Asia (one of which was in Israel). There was not a single one in all of Africa or South America. Thus even after cabinet approved an end to racial selectivity in the case of independent applicants, racial and ethnic discrimination might continue as a product of administrative and procedural arrangements. Finally, Canadian immigration offices were opened in Egypt in 1963, in Japan in 1967, and in Lebanon, the Philippines, the West Indies, and Pakistan in 1968.
In the end, it can be argued that Canada backed into a non-racist immigration policy. The motivation was less to open the country to the arrival of non-whites than to clean up Canada’s international image and bring immigration legislation into line with the focus on human rights in public policy more generally. It was as if Ottawa was inviting the world to a party but did not expect anyone to take up the invitation. If so, the country was in for a surprise. The racial composition of Canadian immigration would change dramatically.
