South Africa and Australia "hushed" so very hard and were so very careful
that after a very extensive experience--150,000 Hindus settled in one
colony--both colonies legislated to shut them out altogether. At least
South Africa's educational test amounted to that, and South Africa and
Australia are quite as imperial as Canada. Why did they do it? The
labor unions were no more behind the exclusion in those countries than in
British Columbia. The labor unions chuckled with glee over the
embarrassment of the whole question.
II
Each side of the question must be stated plainly, not as my personal
opinions or the opinions of any one, but as the arguments of those
advocating the free admission of the Hindu, and of those furiously
opposing the free admission.
A few years ago British Columbia was at her wit's ends for laborers--men
for the mills, the mines, the railroads. India was at her wit's ends
because of surplus of labor--labor for which her people were glad to
receive three, ten, twenty cents a day. Her people were literally
starving for the right to live. It does not matter much who acted as the
connecting link,--the sawmill owners, the canneries, the railroads, or
the steamships. The steamship lines and the sawmill men seem to have
been the combined sinners. The mills wanted labor. The steamship lines
saw a chance to transport laborers at the rate of twenty thousand a year
to and from India. The Hindus came tumbling in at the rate of six
thousand in a single year, when, suddenly, British Columbia, inert at
first, awakened and threatened to secede or throw the newcomers into the
sea. By intervention of the Imperial government and the authorities of
India a sort of subterfuge was rigged up in the immigration laws. The
Hindus had been booked to British Columbia via Hong Kong and Hawaii. The
most of the Japs had come by way of Hawaii. To kill two birds with one
stone, by order-in-council in Ottawa, the regulation was enacted
forbidding the admission of immigrants except on continuous passage from
the land of birth. Canada's immigration law also permits great latitude
in interpretation as to the amount of money that must be possessed by the
incoming settlers. Ordinarily it is fifty dollars for winter,
twenty-five dollars for summer, with a five hundred dollar poll tax
against the Chinaman. The Hindus were required to have two hundred and
fifty dollars on their person.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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