Glimpses into Chinese Immigration in Canada The New Republic & The World Journal Vancouver Newspapers

Related to the Head Tax 6 items

From 1885 to 1923, under the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885, the Canadian government levied a head tax on only Chinese immigrants in order to discourage Chinese people from entering Canada. The price of the tax increased from the fifty dollars at the beginning to a hundred dollars per person in 1900, and to five hundred dollars per person in 1903. In some provinces, such as Newfoundland, the head tax remained in effect until 1949. The government collected 23 million dollars in total from Chinese Canadians. In 1923, to stop the increase of the Chinese population in Canada, the Canadian government abolished the head tax and introduced the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923, also known as the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Act banned all Chinese immigrants, except for a handful of merchants, diplomats, students and Canada-born Chinese. The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1947.

Since 1984, Chinese-Canadian communities have been seeking to redress the head tax issue. However, the two national organizations of Chinese Canadians, the National Congress of Chinese Canadians (NCCC) and the Chinese Canadian National Council (CCNC), both of which were active in requesting the government to redress the head tax, had different demands. In 2006, Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized in the House of Commons to head tax payers and their families and announced other commitments to Chinese-Canadian communities. These selected articles from the World Journal Vancouver will show you perspectives on the long, complex process of redressing the head tax issue.

Source: Chan, A.(2019). Chinese Head Tax in Canada. In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved July2, 2020 from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/chinese-head-tax-in-canada.

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