| Part ofa series on |
| Canadian citizenship |
|---|
 |
.svg) Canada portal |
Thehistory of immigration to Canada details the movement of people to modern-dayCanada. The modern Canadian legal regime was founded in 1867, but Canada also has legal and cultural continuity withFrench andBritish colonies inNorth America that go back to the 17th century, and during the colonial era, immigration was a major political and economic issue with Britain and France competing to fill their colonies with loyal settlers. Until then, the land that now makes up Canada was inhabited by many distinctIndigenous peoples for thousands of years. Indigenous peoples contributed significantly to the culture and economy of the early European colonies to which was added several waves of European immigration. More recently, the source of migrants to Canada has shifted away from Europe and towards Asia and Africa. Canada'scultural identity has evolved constantly in tandem with changes in immigration patterns.
Statistics Canada has tabulated the effect of immigration on population growth in Canada from 1851 to 2001.[1] On average, censuses are taken every ten years, which was howCanadian censuses were first incremented between 1871 and 1901. In 1901, theDominion Government changed its policy so that census-taking occurred every five years subsequently to document the effects of the advertising campaign that was initiated byClifford Sifton.
In 2018, Canada received 321,035 immigrants. The top ten countries of origin, which provided 61% of those, wereIndia (69,973), thePhilippines (35,046),China (29,709),Syria (12,046), theUnited States (10,907),Pakistan (9,488),France (6,175),Eritrea (5,689), and theUnited Kingdom and itsoverseas territories (5,663).[2]
In 1828, during theGreat Migration of Canada, Britain passed theAct to Regulate the Carrying of Passengers in Merchant Vessels, the country's first legislative recognition of its responsibility over the safety and well-being of immigrants leaving theBritish Isles. The act limited the number of passengers who could be carried on a ship, regulated the amount of space allocated to them and required for passengers to be supplied with adequate sustenance on the voyage. The 1828 act is now recognized as the foundation of British colonial emigration legislation.[3]
Canadian citizenship was originally created under theImmigration Act, 1910, to designate those British subjects who weredomiciled in Canada, but all other British subjects required permission to land. A separate status of 'Canadian national' was created under theCanadian Nationals Act, 1921, which defined such British subjects as being Canadian citizens, as well as their wives and children (fathered by such citizens) who had not yet landed in Canada. After the passage of theStatute of Westminster in 1931, the monarchy thus ceased to be an exclusively British institution. As result, Canadians, just as all others living among theCommonwealth realms, were known assubjects of the Crown, and the term "British subject" continued to be used in legal documents.
Canada was the second nation among what was theBritish Commonwealth to establish its own nationality law in 1946, with the enactment of theCanadian Citizenship Act, 1946, taking effect on January 1, 1947. To acquire Canadian citizenship from then forward, one would generally have to be aBritish subject on or before the act took effect; an 'Indian' or 'Eskimo'; or to have been admitted to Canada as landed immigrants before the act took effect. ABritish subject then was anyone from the UK or its colonies (Commonwealth countries). Acquisition and loss of British subject status before 1947 were determined byUnited Kingdom law (seeHistory of British nationality law).
On February 15, 1977, Canada removed restrictions on dual citizenship. Many of the provisions to acquire or lose Canadian citizenship that existed under the 1946 legislation were repealed. Canadian citizens are in general no longer subject to involuntary loss of citizenship barring revocation on the grounds of immigration fraud or criminality. The term "Canadians of convenience" was popularized by thé Canadian politicianGarth Turner in 2006 in conjunction with the evacuation ofCanadian citizens fromLebanon during the2006 Israel–Lebanon conflict. It refers to people withmultiple citizenship who immigrated to Canada, met the residency requirement to obtain citizenship, obtainedCanadian citizenship, and moved back to their original home country while they maintained their Canadian citizenship, with those who support the term claiming they do so as asafety net.
There are a number of reports of contact made before Columbus between the first peoples and those from other continents. The case ofViking contact is supported by the remains of aViking settlement inL'Anse aux Meadows,Newfoundland. No archaeological traces of the settlement described byIcelandicNorsemanLeifur Eiríksson asVinland around the year 1000 have been found.
The presence ofBasque cod fishermen and whalers a few years after Columbus has also been cited, with at least nine fishing outposts having been established onLabrador and Newfoundland. The largest of the settlements was theRed Bay station, with an estimated 900 people.Basquewhalers may have begun fishing theGrand Banks as early as the 15th century.
The next European explorer acknowledged as landing in what is now Canada wasJohn Cabot, who landed somewhere on the coast of North America (probably Newfoundland orCape Breton Island) in 1497 and claimed it for KingHenry VII of England. Portuguese and Spanish explorers also visited Canada, but it was the French who first began to explore further inland and set up colonies, beginning withJacques Cartier in 1534. UnderPierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons, the first French settlement was made in 1604 in the region of New France known asAcadie on Isle Sainte-Croix, which now belongs to Maine, in the Bay of Fundy. That winter was particularly long and harsh and about half of the settlers that had accompanied Sieur de Mons died of scurvy. The following year, the French decided to move to a better-sheltered area and established a new settlement atPort-Royal. In 1608,Samuel de Champlain, established a settlement at Donnacona thaï would later grow to becomeQuebec City. The French claimed Canada as their own, and 6,000 settlers arrived, settling along theSt. Lawrence River and in theMaritimes. Britain also had a presence in Newfoundland and, with the advent of the settlements, claimed the south of Nova Scotia as well as the areas around theHudson Bay.
The first contact with the Europeans was disastrous for the first peoples. Explorers and traders brought European diseases, such assmallpox, which killed off entire villages. Relations varied between the settlers and the Natives. The French befriended theHuron peoples and entered into a mutually-beneficial trading relationship with them. TheIroquois, however, became dedicated opponents of the French, and warfare between the two was unrelenting, especially since the British armed the Iroquois in an effort to weaken the French.
AfterSamuel de Champlain's founding ofQuebec City in 1608, it became thecapital ofNew France. While the coastalcommunities were based upon thecodfishery, the economy of the interior revolved aroundbeaver fur, which was popular in Europe. Frenchvoyageurs would travel into the hinterlands and trade with the natives. The voyageurs ranged throughout what is now Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba and traded guns, gunpowder, textiles, and other European manufacturing goods with the natives for furs. The fur trade encouraged only a small population, however, as minimal labour was required. Encouraging settlement was always difficult, and some immigration occurred, but by 1760, New France had a population of only some 70,000.
New France had other problems besides low immigration. TheFrench government had little interest or ability in supporting its colony, which was mostly left to its own devices. The economy was primitive, and much of the population was involved in little more than subsistence agriculture. The colonists also engaged in a long-running series ofwars with the Iroquois.
Étienne Brûlé exploredOntario from 1610 to 1612. In 1615,Samuel de Champlain visitedLake Huron, and Frenchmissionaries then established outposts in the region.
In the 18th to 19th century, the only immigration that Western Canada orRupert's Land had was earlyFrench CanadianNorth West Companyfur traders from eastern Canada and the Scots, English Adventurers, and Explorers representing theHudson's Bay Company who arrived viaHudson Bay. Canada became a nation in 1867, Rupert's Land became absorbed into theNorth-West Territories. To encourageBritish Columbia to join theCanadian Confederation, atranscontinental railway was proposed. The railway companies felt it was not feasible to lay track over land on which there was no settlement. The fur trading era was declining; thebuffalo population disappeared, and the nomadic buffalo hunters left, which presented a possibility to increase agricultural settlement. Agricultural possibilities were first expounded byHenry Youle Hind. The Dominion government, with the guidance of Interior MinisterClifford Sifton, in charge of immigration, (1896–1905)[4] enacted Canada'shomesteading act, theDominion Lands Act, in 1872. An extensive advertising campaign throughoutWestern Europe andScandinavia brought in a huge wave of immigrants to "The Last, Best West." (In 1763,Catherine the Great issued manifesto, inviting foreigners to settle into Russia,[5] and in 1862, theUnited States enacted theHomestead Act, inviting immigration.)[6]
Ethnic or religious groups seeking asylum or independence no longer travelled to Russia or the United States, where lands were taken or homestead acts were cancelled. TheRed River Colony population ofManitoba allowed it to become aCanadian province in 1870. In the 1880s, fewer than 1,000 non-Aboriginal people resided out West. The government's immigration policy was a huge success since the North-West Territories grew to a population of 56,446 in 1881, almost doubled to 98,967 in 1891, and exponentially jumped to 211,649 by 1901.[7] EthnicBloc Settlements[8] dotted the prairies, as language groupings settled together on soil types of the Canadian western prairie similar to agricultural land of their homeland. That way immigration was successful; new settlements could grow because of common communication and learned agricultural methods. theCanadian Pacific Railway transcontinental railway was finished in 1885.
Immigration briefly ceased to the West during theNorth-West Rebellion of 1885. Various investors and companies were involved in the sale of railway (and some non-railway) lands. Sifton himself may have been involved as an investor in some of the ventures.[9] The populations ofSaskatchewan andAlberta were eligible for provincial status in 1905. Immigration continued to increase through to the roaring twenties. A mass exodus affected the prairies during theDirty Thirties and theGreat Depression, and the prairies have never again regained the impetus of the immigration wave seen in the early 20th century.
Until the railway, immigration to British Columbia was via sea, or (thegold rushes were under way) via overland travel from California and other parts of the US, as there was no usable route westward beyond the Rockies, and travel on the Prairies and across the Canadian Shield was still water-borne. The very small early non-native population of BC was mostly French-Canadian and Metis fur-company employees, their British (largely Scottish) administrators and bosses, and a population of Kanakas (Hawaiians) in the company's employ, as well as members of various Iroquoian peoples, who were also in the service of the fur company. The non-local native population of the British Pacific was from 150 to 300 until the advent of theFraser Gold Rush in 1857, whenVictoria'ss population swelled to 30,000 in four weeks and towns of 10,000, and more appeared at remote locations on the Mainland, atYale,Port Douglas, andLillooet (then called Cayoosh Flat). The wave of settlement was nearly entirely from California and was approximately one third Americans, one third Chinese, and one third various Europeans and others. Nearly all had been in California for many years, including the early Canadians and Maritimers who made the journey north to the new Gold Colony, as British Columbia was often called.
One group of about 60, called the Overlanders of '62, made the journey from Canada via Rupert's Land during theCariboo Gold Rush but was the exception to the rule. An earlier attempt to move some of the settlers of the Selkirk Colony ended in disaster atDalles des Morts, near present-dayRevelstoke. Early immigration to British Columbia was from all nations, largely via California, and included Germans, Scandinavians, Maritimers, Australians, Poles, Italians, French, Belgians, and others, as well as Chinese and Americans, who were the largest groups to arrive in the years around the time of the founding of the Mainland Colony in 1858. Most of the early Americans left in the early 1860s because of theAmerican Civil War and their pursuit of other gold rushes in Idaho, Colorado, and Nevada, but Americans have remained a major component in the settler population ever since. I n the 1860s, in conjunction with theCariboo Gold Rush and agitation to join Canada, more and more Canadians, including the Overlanders, who became influential, arrived and became a force in the local polity, which had been dominated by Britons favouring separate rule, and they helped contribute towards the agenda for annexation with Canada. After the opening of the CPR, a new wave of immigration led not just to the creation ofVancouver and other newer urban settlements, but also to the settlement of numerous regions in theInterior, especially theOkanagan,Boundary,Shuswap, andKootenays.A similar wave of settlement and development accompanied the opening of theGrand Trunk Pacific Railway (today theCanadian National Railway) through the Central Interior, which was also the impetus for the creation of the city of Prince George and the port of Prince Rupert.
The first immigrants from China to Canada came from California to theFraser Canyon Gold Rush in British Columbia in 1858; immigrants directly from China did not arrive until 1859. The Chinese were a significant part of nearly all theBritish Columbia gold rushes, and most towns in BC had large Chinese populations, often a third of the total or more. Chinese labourers were hired to help with the construction of theCariboo Wagon Road andAlexandra Bridge as well as theDouglas Road and other routes. Chinese miners, merchants, and ranchers enjoyed full rights to mineral tenure and land alienation and in some areas became the mainstay of the local economy for decades. The Chinese, for instance, owned 60% of the land in theLillooet Land District in the 1870s and 1880s and held the majority of working claims on the Fraser River and in other areas. The next wave of immigrants from China were labourers brought in to help build theCanadian Pacific Railway, atranscontinental railway, but many defected to the goldfields of theCariboo and other mining districts. In the year that the railway was completed, theChinese Immigration Act of 1885 was enacted, and a head tax was levied to control the ongoing influx of labour although immigration continued as corporate interests in BC preferred to hire the cheaper labour that was made available to them by Chinese labour contractors. Chinese labour was brought in by the Dunsmuir coal interests and used to break the back of strikers atCumberland in theComox Valley, which then became one of British Columbia's largest Chinatowns, as white workers who lived there weredisplaced by armed force.
TheCanadian government's first attempt to restrict immigration fromIndia was to pass anorder-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 acontinuous journey and or through tickets purchased before leaving their country of their birth or nationality."[citation needed] In practice, that applied only to ships that began their voyage in India, as the great distance usually necessitated a stopover inJapan orHawaii. The regulations came at a time while Canada was accepting massive numbers of immigrants (over 400,000 in 1913 alone), almost all of whom came from Europe.Gurdit Singh was apparently aware of regulations when he chartered theKomagata Maru in January 1914,[10] but he continued with his purported goal of challenging these exclusion laws in order to have a better life. TheKomagata Maru, a Japanese steamship that sailed fromHong Kong toShanghai, China;Yokohama, Japan; and then toVancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in 1914, carried 376 passengers fromPunjab,India. The passengers were not allowed to land in Canada, and the ship was forced to return to India. The passengers consisted of 340Sikhs, 24Muslims, and 12Hindus, all of whom wereBritish subjects. That was one of several incidents in the early 20th century involving exclusion laws in Canada and the United States designed to keep out immigrants of Asian origin. Times have now changed, and India has become the largest source of immigrants for Canada. In 2019, India topped the list of immigrants admitted to Canada. Canada welcomed 85,590 Indian nationals, followed by 30,245 from China and 27,820 from the Philippines.[11]
 | This sectiondoes notcite anysources. Please helpimprove this section byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged andremoved.(September 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
German colonists, like theScandinavians, were among the earliest to arrive fromCalifornia and established themselves beyond mining in areas such as ranching and construction and specialized trades. Until World War I,Vancouver was a major centre of German investment and social life, andGerman was commonly heard on the city's streets and bars. The Germans remained the largest non-British group in the province until they were eclipsed in that capacity by the Chinese in the 1980s.
TheDoukhobors were assisted in their immigration by CountLeo Tolstoy, who admired them for theircollectivist lifestyle, beliefs, ardentpacifism, and freedom frommaterialism.[12] Originally settled inSaskatchewan and resistant to the government's desire to send their children to public school and other matters, they migrateden masse to British Columbia to settle in theWest Kootenay andBoundary regions.
TheGreat Migration of Canada (also known as theGreat Migration from Britain) was a period of highimmigration to Canada from 1815 to 1850 involving over 800,000 immigrants chiefly from theBritish Isles. Unlike the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when organized immigration schemes brought in many of the new immigrants to Canada, this period of immigration was driven by demand, based on the need for infrastructure labour in the burgeoning colonies, the filling of new rural settlements, and the poor conditions in some source places such theHighland Clearances in Scotland and later theGreat Famine of Ireland.[13]Europe was overall becoming richer through theIndustrial Revolution, but steeppopulation growth made the relative number of jobs low, and overcrowded conditions forced many to look toNorth America for economic success.[14]
Attempts to form permanent settlement colonies west of theGreat Lakes were beset by difficulty and isolation until the building of theCanadian Pacific Railway and the second of the twoRiel Rebellions. Despite the railway making the region more accessible, there were fears that a tide of settlers from the United States might overrun the British territory. In 1896, Interior MinisterClifford Sifton launched a program of settlement with offices and advertising in the United Kingdom and Continental Europe. That began a major wave of railway-based immigration, which created the farms, towns, and cities of thePrairie Provinces.[15]
Thethird wave of immigration to Canada came mostly from Continental Europe and peaked prior toWorld War I, between 1911 and 1913 (over 400,000 in 1912), many from Eastern or Southern Europe. Thefourth wave came from Europe after the World War II and peaked at 282,000 in 1957. Many were from Italy and Portugal.Pier 21, inHalifax, Nova Scotia, was an influential port for European immigration and received 471,940 Italians between 1928 until it ceased operations in 1971. That madeItalians the third largest ethnic group to immigrate to Canada during the time period.[16] Together, they made Canada a more multiethnic country with substantial non-British or non-French European elements. For example,Ukrainian Canadians accounted for the largest Ukrainian population outside Ukraine and Russia. TheChurch of England took up the role of introducing British values to farmers newly arrived on the prairies, but in practice, the migrants mostly clung to their traditional religious affiliations.[17]
Periods of low immigration have also occurred. International movement was very difficult during the world wars, and there was a lack of jobs during theGreat Depression in Canada.
Canadianization was a high priority for new arrivals lacking a British cultural background.[18] Immigrants from Britain were given highest priority.[19] There was no special effort to attract francophone immigrants. In terms of economic opportunity, Canada was most attractive to farmers headed to the Prairies, who typically came from Eastern and Central Europe. Immigrants from Britain preferred urban life.[20]
Immigration since the 1970s has overwhelmingly been ofvisible minorities from thedeveloping world. That was largely influenced in 1976, when the Immigration Act was revised and has continued to be official government policy. DuringBrian Mulroney's government, immigration levels were increased. By the late 1980s, thefifth wave of immigration had been maintained with slight fluctuations since (225,000–275,000 annually). Currently, most immigrants come fromSouth Asia,China, and theCaribbean, a trend that is expected to continue.
The following is the chronology of Canadian immigration and citizenship laws.
Renowned Russian novelist and pacifist Leo Tolstoy who referred to the Doukhobors as the "Best Farmers in Russia", as well as Peter Kropotkin and James Mavor, all played a key role in the settlement of the group.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Statistics Canada – immigration from 1851 to 2001
{{citation}}:|first= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)| Year list (Timeline) | |
|---|---|
| Topics | |
| Provinces and territories | |
| Cities | |
| Research | |
| Search | |
| History |
| ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Provinces and territories |
| ||||
| Geography |
| ||||
| Government |
| ||||
| Economy | |||||
| Demographics |
| ||||
| Society | |||||
| Culture |
| ||||
| Contents | |||||
| Research | |||||
| Search | |||||
