How Did Canadian Immigration Change Throughout The 20th Century

Immigration is a major component in Canadian history. It makes Canada the diverse, multicultural and welcoming country it is today. Although it was not always this way, throughout the 20th century Canadian immigration took many turns, some for good and others not so much. Canada stood with mostly unrestricted immigrations laws in the beginning of the 20th century besides the Chinese Head Tax that was put in place in British Columbia. It was raised to $100 in 1900 and $500 in 1903. Although this did not completely block Asian immigration it did make it fairly difficult for those of Chinese origin to migrate to Canada. In contrast, 1906 was the year, Frank Oliver a Liberal MP took a step towards defining immigration laws as he defined an immigrant. This resulted in a flood of immigrants to lesser habited parts of the country such as the Canadian West, this added to the ethnic diversity of the nation due to the fact that now all Canadians weren’t only English or French. It also boosted the economy, and by 1910 over 50% of Canadians were living urban lifestyles.
This system was introduced in 1967 as an effort to eliminate discrimination against candidates seeking immigration. The Point System consists of assigning points on a scale of 0 to 10 (or 15 in some cases) based on if applicants knew English or French, their age, had arranged employment in Canada, if they had family members or relatives living in Canada, their education, their desired area of immigration. This increased ethnical diversity due to the fact that more applicants from Africa, the Caribbean, the Middle East and Asia were migrating with the help of the Point System, and economical diversity was increased because these individuals settled in urban centres such as Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver