Canada and America. ——Borders Apart– Immigration at Heart
During my senior years in high school, I developed a love for history. This is due in large measure to my late high school teacher, who was entertaining, encouraging and enlightening. As I began to learn about some of history’s greatest tragedies, I would sometimes wonder what went through people’s minds, especially ordinary people who were witness to extraordinary events.
History seen through anyone’s eyes is inherently subjective, not to mention subject to all kinds of inaccuracies. Trying to understand people’s perspective, and to decipher their motivations, is endlessly fascinating to me. At times we are not conscious of why we make certain decisions, and at other times we actively conceal the reasons why we do. Now everyone is surprisingly taken aback at the mass deportations occurring in the United States. Why? I cannot say
As history shows, mass deportations are nothing new in this country. In fact, to accomplish his goal, the president-elect is promising to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime law that allows the president to deport non-citizens deemed an enemy of the United States. While on the campaign trail, Trump declared that he would use the law to carry out “Operation Aurora” — arresting and deporting immigrant criminals like the now-infamous Tren de Aragua gang that made headlines in Aurora, Colorado. It is often forgotten that immigrants, whether they are undocumented or documented, commit crimes at much lower rates than native-born Americans.)
Trump would not be the first president to round up undocumented immigrants — criminals or otherwise — en masse. To break any kind of record he would have to double his deportation numbers from his first presidency. During the Great Depression, increased economic pressure and strained resources stoked xenophobia and accusations that immigrants, particularly Mexicans, were taking jobs needed by U.S. citizens. President Herbert Hoover touted plans guaranteeing “Americans. “The message was clear : Non-white people were not Americans — even if they were born in the U.S. Local agencies started excluding immigrants from getting aid, and officials floated the idea of deporting immigrants who had become a “public charge.” Informal raids and sweeps were conducted in major cities in border states like California but also in Michigan and Illinois. It’s estimated that by the mid-1930s, over a million Mexicans were returned to Mexico.
“Operation Wetback” is known as the largest mass deportation in American history, and many view it as the model for Trump’s current immigration plans.
In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower mounted a massive political campaign and deportation operation to combat Mexican immigration, named after a derogatory slur for immigrants who crossed rivers to reach the U.S. It wasn’t a long operation, but it was widespread. The INS planned sweeps of factories and farms as if they were “war strikes,” all to round up undocumented workers and return them to Mexico. Some of them were U.S.-born citizens of Mexican descent.
Soldiers rounding up terrified civilians, expelling them from their land, burning their homes and crops it sounds like a 20th century nightmare in one of the world’s trouble spots, but it describes a scene from Canada’s early history, the Deportation of the Acadians.
Between 1755 and 1763, approximately 10,000 Acadians were deported. They were shipped to many points around the Atlantic. Large numbers were landed in the English colonies, others in France or the Caribbean. Thousands died of disease or starvation in the squalid conditions on board ship.
The Canadian Department of Immigration moved into a new phase of deportation work in the latter stage of the First World War, with the deliberate and systematic deportation of agitators, activists and radicals. Some of these were people who had not done anything illegal, but who were considered undesirable on the basis of their political beliefs and activities. The threat they posed was not to the people of Canada, but to the vested interests such as big business, exploitative employers, and a government acting on behalf of interest groups.
Immigrants were particularly vulnerable to unemployment during the Great Depression in the 1930s, a time of increased Canadian nativism. The Canadian government implemented exclusionary immigration policies, applying severe restrictions to entry and drastically increasing deportation. “Unsuitable” immigrants, such as those in jail or hospitals, or otherwise living at public expense, became key targets for exclusion and deportation.
“Canada Seems to be Overdoing It”
Credit: Editorial, Toronto Star, 27 February 1931 (copied in “Deportation of undesirables from Canada (lists)”, Library and Archives Canada, RG 76 Volume 395 File 563236 Part 14)
Rev. W.B. Williston of Cochrane, Ontario wrote to the government stating thus;
“The public rightly ask, that you remove from this place, the Russian and other European people, who have only been in this country for a short time, and particularly the men of this class who are sending all their earnings back to Europe, should not be allowed to have the work on the Power and R.R. construction, while hundreds of Canadians are standing in the bread line.
Somewhat not surprisingly, Nearly half of Canadians favour mass deportations and 65% think there are too many immigrants: poll
https://nationalpost.com/news/nearly-half-of-canadians-favour-mass-deportations-and-65-think-there-are-too-many-immigrants-poll
A Leger poll done in 2024 for the Association for Canadian Studies found that 48 per cent of Canadians hold that view — just once percentage point shy of Americans polled who, with the election of Donald Trump, could see such a policy enacted when he assumes office in 2025
Despite some similarities with the United States, the polling found that the U.S. is far more polarized than Canada on questions of immigration.
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canada-immigration-poll-2
It is often difficult to know when history-defining events are taking place in real time. Yet, it is crystal clear that this is one such time. Each of us must make an affirmative decision not to be one of the people about whom future generations will ask, in disbelief, “What was Donald Trump thinking?”
Aluta continua— The struggle continues.
