The Immigration System Merely Mirrored Slavery

Slavery was a mechanism put in place that allowed ‘prestigious people’ to take advantage of other individuals. This allowed them to take away their human rights treating as though they were property by buying, selling and owning. Men and women were held against their will after being captured or bought by other slave owners. When slavery was abolished; there was still an increasing demand for labour which brought about the immigration labour system. The immigration labour system was introduced after the abolition of slavery in order to reduce the impending labour problems being experienced by plantation owners. “Although the planters were very enthusiastic about immigrant labour schemes, the governments, both imperial and colonial, were hesitant.” (Immigration Labour 2011).

While governments were reluctant to agree on the system, the British government had no choice but to favour it because they were faced with a major predicament, having to sustain the sugar economies of its West Indian colonies and maintain sugar imports into Britain (Immigration Labour 2011). The Anti- Slavery Society kept governments under a watchful eye because they viewed the system as another form of slavery. As a result, “in 1838 James Stephen, a Colonial Office official, humanitarian and drafter of the 1833 Emancipation Act, was appointed to draw up conditions for immigrant labour schemes which would make it clear that no new slave trade was being established because they did not want to be accused of hypocrisy by foreign governments in allowing a new slave trade while persuading other countries to stop theirs” (Immigration Labour 2011).

Some of the conditions drafted by Mr. James Stephen applied to all immigration schemes, but mainly concerned Indian schemes. After a cost for transporting immigrants was introduced planters insisted on having a written contract for migrants to sign. The increasing trend of refusing contracts when faced with the hard conditions of plantation labour