A Short Analysis of Chinese Exclusion in Canada

...

Nevertheless, denoting prejudice and racism as the sole contributors to exclusion is also not exhaustive in painting the full picture for the causes of exclusion. “In the labour press, one can find powerful condemnations of the ‘unrighteous wars’ in Africa and Asia waged by powerful European imperial powers.” (Goutor, 2007, 119). Phillips Thompson claimed that a “world-wide fraternity’ was the only adequate response to a capitalist system that ‘has no patriotism and no prejudices…” (Goutor, 2007, 119). We must keep in mind, that Canadian labour leaders were somewhat ‘spoon-fed’ stereotypes from other countries that had been experiencing Asian immigration ahead of time. Americans “supplied models of the exclusionary laws they wanted the government to replicate without delay.” (Goutor, 2007, 121).

Labour leaders felt they were both the vanguards of the working class, and the front-line brigade composed of those who would “challenge the hegemonic culture.” (Goutor, 2007, 119). There is good reason to believe that leaders genuinely felt Chinese migration would undermine their efforts to bring about fairness, equality, and dignity in the employer-employee relationship. Labour leaders saw their movement as an attempt to emancipate workers from capitalistic control, the same way abolitionists hoped to free the blacks. (Goutor, 2007, 120). This sentiment could be understood by observing the views of coal tycoon, Robert Dunsmuir. He was notorious for being ruthless, welcoming strike-breakers, starving his workers and thwarting any attempts at wage increases by threatening to import Oriental workers. (Morton, 2007, 52). “For Dunsmuir, Chinese miners were the obvious answer to [his] labour problems.” (Morton, 2007, 54). Labour felt owners were using Chinese migrants to mitigate attempts to move forward decent livings for their members. “…[we] will live on rice, wear the least expensive clothing, give up [our] families and homes..” (Goutor, 2007, 123). Further evidence to show that Asian complicity may be the cause of these fears is that leaders felt “industrial servitude would become even more severe than plantation slavery.” They felt the need to protect their workers because “an intelligent population is the best safeguard against the tyranny of capitalism.” (Goutor, 2007, 125). To summarize, Goutor notes that “labour leaders saw their campaign against the Asian ‘menace’ as an important part of their broader struggle against capitalism.” (Goutor, 2007, 126).

“Consensus historians often focus on racial barriers and the nation-state. They interpret anti-Chinese laws as central expressions of larger race relations, national politics, imperial identity, legal culture, and bureaucratic state-building.” (Mar, 2010, 8).

This dynamics between Chinese immigrants in late 1800s and the Canadian working class have proved to be complex and fluid. There seems to be no straightforward answer to whether the exclusion of from the host society is due to reasons concerning xenophobia or economic stability. None the less, there seems to be a strong component of capitalism at play. In their paper, ‘Global Capitalism, Immigrant Labor, and the Struggle for Justice’, Robinson and Santos attempt to illustrate how the nature of capitalism discourages immigration. They write, “Everywhere, borders are militarized, states are stepping up repressive anti-immigrant controls, and native publics are turning immigrants into scapegoats for the spiraling crisis of global capitalism” (Robinson and Santos, 2014). Moving forward, in his paper, 'Theories of International Immigration Policy-A Comparative Analysis’, Eytan Meyers claims that, according to Marxist theories of immigration, immigration policies are largely shaped by economic factors and class-based political process (Meyers, 2000). Keeping that in mind, we can see the both these processes at play in the case of early Chinese immigrants in Canada. The late 1800s were by no means a financially comfortable time for the Canadian working class, and their desperation was used against them both by labour leaders and capitalists. Labour leaders turned Chinese workers into scapegoats, as they saw their potential to drive down wages a real threat to their union members. Meyers writes that “that capitalists import migrant workers in order to exert a downward pressure on wages and thereby increase their own profits” (Meyers, 2000). This seems to be captured best my Robert Dunsmuir threatening is workers with bringing in immigrants who will be comfortable to work on lower wages, in order to dissolve strikes workers organized in order to demand higher living wages. As we can see, these sorts of actions by capitalists, business owners and elites provide protective labour leaders with incentives to turn their workers against immigration. Immigration is being used as a told to limit worker organization and increased wages.

When one takes this into the fear of workers in the face of migrants that were willing to take lower wages, we can see the atmosphere that creates for the potential for xenophobia. Alluding to a Marxist reading of immigration, the case can be made that capitalism gives rise to xenophobia through the competition it relies on. With workers already having to face business owners like Robert Dunsmuir, they will more easily buy into carefully crafted propaganda that reshapes the view of the immigrants as ‘job-stealers’ and overall, paint them negatively with a large brush. A case can easily made for how the branding of Asian Americans as potentially dangerous to women, drug-users, docile and low-wage friendly, would be more easily marketed to a class who was often on the brink of starvation, if they were unemployed.

This paper has made a broad attempt to explore the question – were labour leaders hostile to Chinese workers because they hated all immigration and were prejudiced towards all racialized groups? The case has been made, that the causes of Chinese exclusion are complex and dynamic, and as such, cannot be restricted solely to labour leaders hating all immigration and due to their prejudice towards all racialized group. Their solidarity with blacks and aboriginals, even though racialized, provides evidence that xenophobia was not the sole motivator. Drawing from the experiences of British, continental, eastern and southern European immigrants, a case can be made that, due to equal stigmatization of their immigration, that leaders also largely feared wage-drops from international competition. None the less, their increased hostility towards Asians as compared to the British and European immigrants provides us with a strong suggestion, that prejudice towards Asians also played a large role in the hostility of and exclusion towards Asians from social and political