Canad A Beneficial Thing - 1693 Words

Canada in the early stages was not how it was today, especially in the area of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism in Canada during the 1900’s was rare and not spoken of. In fact, the British people in Canada were against it. They came up with laws like the â€Å"Chinese Head Tax†, the â€Å"Continuous Journey Regulation† and residential schools in order to make it hard for foreigners to come and live in Canada. After awhile, Canada decided to become an independent country and separated from the British rule . With this change Canada had a different way of seeing immigrants. They started to see that immigrants’ coming to Canada was a beneficial thing. Canada was the first country in the world to adopt multiculturalism as an official policy. By doing†¦show more content†¦Back then, Canada was an extension of the British rule and was ruled by the whites. Britain being as powerful as they were in the 1900’s, had a vision of Canada being â€Å" Home away from home†. In other words, the British wanted Canada to be for just the whites. With this mentality put in their heads the Canadians started to enforce laws to try and â€Å"keep Canada as white as possible’’. One of them was the ‘Chinese Head Tax’ which was a tax that was put on every Chinese person that wanted to enter Canada. At the beginning, when the law was first put in place, it only cost fifty dollars for every Chinese immigrant. However, as time went on the price multiplied, as it rose to an astonishing five hundred dollars . This was a huge problem for the Chinese as they did not make a lot of money, they found it very difficult paying for the head taxes. This resulted in fewer Chinese immigrants coming to Canada, which was what the Canadians and British wanted to happen. Another law Canada enforced was, the â€Å"Continuous Journey† regulation which was introduced in the early 1900’s. â€Å"This law only allo wed entry to Asian passengers that had sailed on a â€Å"continuous journey† from their home land to Canada. † Enforcing this law the government knew that not many Asians would stay on a cramped ship for several months due to the spread of sicknesses and diseases, so they were satisfied with this law and were still motivated to keep Canada’s immigration levels low. Another act