Canada
The Parliament of Canada passed the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 to bar all Chinese from coming to Canada with the exception of diplomats, students, and those granted special permission by the Minister of Immigration. Chinese immigration to Canada had already been heavily regulated by the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885 which required Chinese immigrants to pay a fifty dollar fee to enter the country (the fee was increased to one hundred dollars in 1900 and to five hundred dollars in 1903). Groups such as the Asiatic Exclusion League, which had formed in Vancouver, British Columbia on 12 August 1907 under the auspices of the Trades and Labour Council, pressured Parliament to halt Asian immigration. The Exclusion League's stated aim was "to keep Oriental immigrants out of British Columbia."
The Canadian government also attempted to restrict immigration from India by passing an order-in-council on January 8, 1908, that prohibited immigration of persons who "in the opinion of the Minister of the Interior" did not "come from the country of their birth or citizenship by a continuous journey and or through tickets purchased before leaving their country of their birth or nationality." In practice this applied only to ships that began their voyage in India, as the great distance usually necessitated a stopover in Japan or Hawaii. These regulations came at a time when Canada was accepting massive numbers of immigrants (over 400,000 in 1913 alone – a figure that remains unsurpassed to this day), almost all of whom came from Europe. This piece of legislation has been called the "continuous journey regulation".
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Famous quotes containing the word canada:
“Canadians look down on the United States and consider it Hell. They are right to do so. Canada is to the United States what, in Dante’s scheme, Limbo is to Hell.”
—Irving Layton (b. 1912)
“In Canada an ordinary New England house would be mistaken for the château, and while every village here contains at least several gentlemen or “squires,” there is but one to a seigniory.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I see Canada as a country torn between a very northern, rather extraordinary, mystical spirit which it fears and its desire to present itself to the world as a Scotch banker.”
—Robertson Davies (b. 1913)