The Economics of Immigration and Roxham Road, Part 2: Canadian Immigration from an Historical Perspective
Before we can debate immigration policy, we need to understand our historical policies as well as the effects of colonialism
This issue of my newsletter was co-written by Michaelle Tuz-Atkinson, my wife and partner in our joint Substack newsletter titled Ride On: The Drive for Better Transportation Systems. She has undergraduate degrees in Sociology/Anthropology and Psychology, as well as a Master’s degree in Health Sciences, so her expertise in these areas was very helpful.
In last week’s issue of this newsletter, the basic economic theory of immigration was explained, along with some extensions to that theory to make it more realistic. In that post, I explained that people emigrate from their home countries due to factors that “push” them away from their home countries (e.g., war, poverty, crimes against humanity), as well as factors that “pull” them into their destination countries (e.g., higher standards of living, more religious and political freedoms). Countries like Canada, the U.S., and Australia are traditional immigrant countries because we have some of the best “pull” factors.
Focusing on Canada specifically, it is known around the world as very welcoming to immigrants, as made evident by the fact that so many people have gone to great lengths to cross the Canada/U.S. border at unofficial crossings like Roxham Road. However, our country still has its own dark past not only when it comes to the treatment of immigrants, but also with respect to how the European immigrants (colonizers) who settled here many centuries ago treated the Indigenous peoples who were here before them.
Many of us (including your authors) tend to either not understand or simply forget these historical events when we feel boastful of Canada’s virtues. We therefore want to give an overview of this history so that we can learn from our anscestors’ mistakes when debating appropriate immigration and refugee policies. The trauma created over the centuries still lives in the minds of many people today, so we need to understand how to avoid creating more traumatic experiences for new immigrants.
While that all sounds negative, we want to be clear that we still love our country, and with that in mind, this overview will also demonstrate how far our country has come. After all, despite the sins of our historical leaders, people around the world still consider Canada one of the best countries in which to live.
This might not seem related to economics, but on the contrary, helping immigrants become productive members of society is a key goal of economists; to do so, we need to understand how historical immigration policies and neo-colonialism has affected the achievement of that goal.
But before moving on, I invite you to please consider a paid subscription to this newsletter, as it will help me to devote more time and other resources to my research. While writing Walls and Bridges does bring me great joy, it is also a source of income so anything you can contribute will be much appreciated.
A Brief History of Canadian Immigration Policy
It is critical to recognize the significant impact tragic events, such as colonialism, genocide, and war, as reflected in slavery, mass killings and/or the abolishing of cultures, have on humanity across the globe (Rodríguez, 2018), thus leading to increased poverty rates in these communities and glass ceilings in terms of employment. It is important that all citizens — whether they be natural citizens or immigrants and refugees — keep their identities, take pride in their ancestries, and have a sense of belonging if we are to help them become self-sufficient.
One renowned example of war with a global impact was World War II, a major aftermath of which involved many Jewish immigrants trying to find homes outside countries controlled by the Nazis. Sadly, many Jewish Holocaust survivors faced obstacles created by governments and societies around the world, including in Canada where, according to Rutland (2001, 62), “the attitude to the immigration of Jewish Holocaust survivors was reflected in the unofficial comment of a Canadian immigration official that ‘none is too many’.”
A prominent Canadian example of colonization is the Indian Residential School System, which Robertson (2006) argues made its survivors suffer from a unique form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) known as “Residential School Syndrome”. Both that author and Barker et al. (2019) also explain that even those who never attended these schools can suffer psychologically from intergenerational trauma, thus negatively affecting their cultural identities, as well as their socioeconomic statuses and societal systems over successive generations. At the time Elias et al. (2012, 1561) published their article, there were “four generations of First Nations residential school survivors in Canada who may have transmitted the trauma they experienced to their own children and the children of their children, and to non-descendents (sic) by way of indirect trauma effects at the level of the community.” The last residential school closed in 1996, which is relatively recent. More generally, both Betancourt, Thomson, and VanderWeele (2018) and MacDonald and Steenbeek (2015) argue war can significantly impact families negatively for generations.
Along these same lines, as early as 1830, Siebert (1896) reports many Black people who had been enslaved in the U.S. did their best to flee into both Northern states and Canada via the Underground Railroad. A later example is from 1911, when many Black people moved to the Canadian Prairies due to adverse legal policies existing in Oklahoma, but then discovered they continued to face significant legal roadblocks with respect to even getting into the country due to their race. Even when Canadian officials ultimately could not legally keep them out of the country, and they were then able to participate in various existing organizations and use the public services available to them, they still faced extreme discrimination.
Similarly, in the late 1700s/early 1800s, Black people migrated to Nova Scotia to escape slavery. They were promised land and freedom, but found they were considered inferior beings by White people, and thus encountered significant obstacles. These Black people fought against the societal oppression they were facing to create Africville, which was destroyed by the City of Halifax by January 1970 and its residents forcefully relocated. Although the Mayor of Halifax issued a public apology in 2010 for the razing of Africville, not all former residents accepted it.
Many Canadians view slavery as a problem that existed in the United States, but Santos and Morey (2015, 19) point out Canada has its own “hidden history” with respect to its involvement in the African slave trade, one which did not officially end until 1833 with the Slavery Abolition Act. Nonetheless, such events as described above still occurred here after 1833, causing generational harm for many Black Canadians who continue to experience discrimination in the workplace and elsewhere in their lives, thus affecting their socioeconomic status (Hossein, 2017).
Several colonizing countries also intentionally created discriminatory immigration policies after ending slavery officially, such as the “head tax” legislated in 1885 to reduce the number of Chinese persons entering Canada, a tax that existed until the legislation of the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 (Rodríguez, 2018). It existed while the Canadian government continued to profit from their immigration, most notably while they risked their lives for Canada to build the Canadian Pacific Railroad (Ranganathan, 2020). Another example took place from 1908-1947 when the Canadian government instituted the Continuous Journey legislation with the purpose of restricting “Indian immigration by foreclosing their right as British colonial subjects to migrate to Canada” (Rodríguez, 2018, 22). Additionally, during WWII Japanese people were forcibly sent to internment camps in Canada in retribution for Japan’s role in the war, dispossessing them of their Canadian property (Read, 2016).
It is critical to acknowledge the impacts of colonialism are still apparent today in the forms of neo-colonialism (economic colonialism). For example, Durokifa and Ijeoma (2018) argue “neo-colonialism encourages the dependency syndrome where developing nations remain dependent on developed nations.” With a particular focus on India, Kothiyal, Bell, and Clarke (2018, 3-4) argue “the concept of neo-colonialism enables understanding of ongoing processes of political, economic and cultural domination through which scholars in business schools in the rest of the world continue to be dominated and subordinated by those in the West.” Harshman (2017, 83) covers a conflict caused in the Democratic Republic of Congo due to illegal mining of minerals used to make cellular phones; a Humanities teacher in Costa Rica is quoted as saying, “We are still living in a world of colonizers and colonized and the phones students use literally connect them to those issues.” Then there is the issue of neo-colonialism in the context of oil, such as with Syria and Iraq (De Cesari, 2015), and Venezuela (Strønen, 2020).
Colonialism and neo-colonialism are also correlated with poorer health outcomes due to racial discrimination (Cormack, Stanley, and Harris, 2018), media representations of women of colour (Benard, 2016), and assimilation (MacDonald and Steenbeek, 2015). Speight (2007, 127), who completed a broad literature review on racism, argues racism or prejudice is “a process, a condition, a relationship that violates its victims physically, socially, spiritually, materially, and psychologically.” Furthermore, Kirmayer, Simpson, and Cargo (2003) find positive correlations between European colonialism and Canadian Aboriginal diabetes, tuberculosis, heart disease, hypertension, long-term disability, post-traumatic stress disorder, mental health problems, and suicide issues. In addition, a consequence of ethnic discrimination is “internalized discrimination”, where racially subordinated people either consciously or unconsciously accept a racial hierarchy in which White people are dominant (Bulhan, 2015; Byrne, Clarke, and Rahman, 2018). In short, a feeling of displacement or disconnectedness to Canada is felt by many people, from immigrants to Indigenous peoples who suffered from their land being taken and their ways erased.
The influence of colonialism and neo-colonialism also exists in remote areas in Canada, having a significant influence on lives of some Indigenous populations via its effects on climate injustice, and the erasure of their cultures and ways of life (Whyte, 2016). In another example, Bernauer (2019) argues most of the wealth created in Nunavut from mineral extraction accrues to external interests. For awhile, regarding Canadian history with respect to Indigenous peoples and cultural genocide, the Canadian government tried to hide and diminish it (Annett, 2010), as it did with slavery (Austin, 2010).
Interestingly, Molloy and Madokoro (2017) highlight a particular change made to Canada’s immigration policy in 1969: for humanitarian reasons, those escaping from persecution should not be seen the same as those who are moving to Canada in search of work. This was a vital reform made to policy at the time, as it legally gives space for people to enter Canada regardless of religion, gender, socioeconomic status, or country of origin when they flee from situations such as war and genocide.
According to Molloy and Madokoro (2017) and Ferrer, Picot, and Riddell (2014), another change to Canada’s immigration policy in the late 1960s was to create a “points system” for accepting economic migrants. Since then, according to Statistics Canada (2017), 3.5 per cent of the Canadian population are recent immigrants, and the majority (60.3 per cent) of immigrants were admitted in the economic category, compared to refugees (11.6 per cent). Furthermore, Crossman, Hou, and Picot (2021, Table 3) cite the 2016 Canadian Census to demonstrate 95.1 per cent of male new immigrants and 94.1 per cent of female new immigrants can converse in at least one of Canada’s two official languages, and an increasing proportion of new immigrants between 2001 and 2019 resided in the Prairies. Hence, Canada’s immigration policy seems to be progressing in a better direction because, as far as non-refugee immigrants are concerned, it considers a person’s education and vocational skills relative to labour market needs, rather than country of origin.
However, one can imagine advantages still tend to be experienced by White educated males who speak either English or French, as these immigrants are more likely to originate from developed countries where there are more economic resources and fewer obstacles in terms of finances and educational attainment. Nonetheless, even immigrants with significant levels of formal education in their home countries often do not have their credentials recognized and are less likely to be employed in their fields of expertise. For example, Litchmore and Safdar (2015, 189) cite evidence from the 2001 Canadian Census that the unemployment rate for Muslims aged 15+ who are eligible to work in Canada was 14.4 per cent, compared to 7.4 per cent for all religious groups surveyed, and 7.2 per cent for the national average. The authors also report “Muslims who had the second highest level of educational attainment among all the religious groups within the study had the lowest income levels, with the majority earning less than $30,000 per year.” These statistics might demonstrate the existence of systematic inequality and/or prejudice against Muslims in Canadian society.
On a more positive note, Bogotch et al. (2019) argue the Canadian government was well-equipped and organized when helping Syrian refugees in 2016, in terms of the citizenship process, education, employment, shelter, and mental health. The authors also highlight the importance of agencies working together to better fulfill the various needs of immigrants. These arrangements and the significant number of people who use these agencies demonstrate these organizations play a vital role in the lives of immigrants, as well as others. Thus, it is arguable the government should be doing its best to permanently fund these agencies, as the impact they have on these people’s lives benefit society by helping immigrants become productive members of society.
Today, the Canadian government is aware of employment inequity, because persons who are in at least one of four groups (Aboriginal, visible minorities, long-term disabilities, and women) can self-declare under the Employment Equity Act with the intention of increasing their chances of attaining employment. The expectations of employment inequities based on gender and whether someone is born in Canada are reinforced with data provided by Crossman, Hou, and Picot (2021, Table 1), who demonstrate that employment gaps between different categories of immigrants and Canadian-born persons from 2001-19 were much higher for females than for males; the average weekly earnings gap also worsened more for females than males during these years (Crossman, Hou, and Picot, 2021, Table 2). A potential implication of these statistics is female immigrants might be more likely to be homeless than male immigrants. As for Aboriginals, the Department of Justice (2019) reports they are overrepresented in the Canadian criminal justice system, not only as people accused or convicted of crimes, but also as victims of crime.
Summary Remarks
In summary, a primary explanation for the oppression and exploitation of people, whether based on ethnicity or gender, is profit for certain members of society (Rodríguez, 2018). Furthermore, particularly vulnerable populations in these countries are impacted as they find it significantly more difficult than necessary to become a part of the system, to have a voice, and to live above the poverty line, a situation which may affect families in this position for generations (Miller and Rasmussen, 2017). Therefore, a greater number of people from non-White European origins need to be heard, so crucial changes can be made to existing institutions with values they espouse. It has been said history is written by the victors who change civilizations, form institutions, and make rules under which these institutions operate (Parsons and Nalau, 2016).
Although the point of this post is not to place undue blame for society’s problems on people with White European backgrounds, it is crucial that a balance between understanding, acceptance, and free speech be created to find solutions to society’s problems (Karimi, 2021). That said, it is important to recognize effects of colonialism and neo-colonialism, wars, and more, which might contribute to a family’s low socioeconomic status today.
Finally, regardless of a family’s history, it can be difficult for impoverished families to get out of poverty, which can exist for a complex set of reasons (Bradshaw, 2007; La Placa and Corlyon, 2016). For example, Franke (2014, 392) argues children experience significant amounts of toxic stressors “that increase one’s vulnerability to maladaptive health outcomes such as an unhealthy lifestyle, socioeconomic inequity, and poor health.” Also, adults in lower social economic brackets who are raising children tend to experience significantly more stressors. Hence, it would be ideal if every society in the world tackled immigration in a manner that is respectful and appropriate to each country, community, and person, as humans are unique and intersectional with respect to our identities.
Thank you for reading to this post in the end, and I look forward to writing for you again next week.