Publisher's Synopsis
Canada has been among the world's most active immigration nations. Of course attitudes towards immigrants have fluctuated and standards about ethnic acceptibility have shifted. Debate about immigration policy has, however, been constant.;This work is a history of the evolution of Canadian immigration policy, with three major threads. Firstly, an analysis of how pressure groups - business, labour, ethnic, political, bureaucratic - determined Canada's policies. While there is some reference to professional and skilled migrants, the emphasis is appropriately on the unskilled and the massive numbers demanded by spokesmen for the labour-intensive industries - extractive, transportation, construction, companies - and their political allies. These determined the scale and composition of immigration.;A second thread is a study of immigrant workers, and their experiences as shaped by racial and ethnic considerations. The third thread is a study of official policy. Class, race and ethnicity determined both Canada's policy towards different groups of immigrant workers, and where foreign-born men and women found employment.
