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1914-1945: Overview / War Years / Interwar Years / World War II / Changing Attitudes
Introduction
An immediate result of the war experience was a new Immigration Act, passed in 1919. It established policy direction for the next twenty-five years. Henceforth, Canadians would discriminate between immigrant groups coming from "most" and "non" preferred countries. Immigration policies discouraged the arrival of immigrants from numerous different political and cultural backgrounds. More heavy restrictions on their entry and the wider application of deportation procedures against specific cultural and political groups became common at Canadian ports and border crossings.
Many of the new policies arose in a context of political and economic uncertainty. More Canadians in the
inter-war years moved to the United States or left rural settings for industrializing cities. Interwar economic problems and widespread unemployment, the spiraling costs of local social welfare programs, and the rise of radical political movements-especially in the West among large immigrant communities-placed new stresses on natural-born Canadians, naturalized citizens, and recent immigrants alike. When ongoing financial problems forced Canadian business and resource industries to enlist more cheap immigrant labour by the mid-1920s, bringing about Canada's second wave of immigration in 1925, new backlashes arose against "hyphenated Canadianism."
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Immigration Act, 1919. The Immigration Act of 1919 determined the kinds of immigrants that Canada would allow to come to its shores and those to whom it would deny entry. The legislation established "prohibited or undesirable classes" of immigrants, groups that the government would no longer accept into the country. The Act was significant because of its restrictive nature and because it defined immigration policy for the interwar period. |
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