Immigration legislation. – The Canadian legislation on immigration has proposed, since the first years of the foundation of the Confederation (1867; see below), two purposes: the first, that of preventing the entry into the Dominion of undesirable elements, and among these, in addition to the immigrants included in the ostracism sanctioned by the neighboring American Republic, Canada also includes, although it does not openly proclaim it, the workers who contribute to increasing population congestion in large cities. The other purpose proposed by the immigration law is to encourage colonization (see below). A more restrictive policy, in order to achieve the first goal, was able to establish itself in recent years, also to remedy the damage of internal unemployment of the workers employed in the industries. During the’ 1922 there were some changes in immigration regulations. Making use of the government’s broad discretion in this matter, the so-called money qualification, which required that the immigrant arriving in Canada, if he was not headed for an insured job in agriculture, had to bring with him the sum of 250 dollars. The money qualification did not prevent many non-farm immigrants from going to increase the ranks of the unemployed in the big cities, once they had exhausted their peculiarities. It also did not prevent – concern that Canada has always had – that many emigrants used Canada as a back door, that is, as a back door, to enter the neighboring republic of the United States, especially after the entry into force of the restrictive laws there. adopted. To the criterion of money qualification therefore, in 1922, that of the profession was replaced and it was established that, while the provisions concerning the “literacy test” and medical examination remained unchanged, only immigrants who proved that they were really farmers, that is farmers, who went to start a farm on your own; farm laborers, that is, agricultural workers who went for a guaranteed job to agriculture in the service of others and finally people employed in the domestic service. For all other cases, the prior consent of the Canadian Department of Immigration or its agents is always required.
Italian immigration. – You can get a precise idea of Italy’s contribution to total immigration into Canada by looking at immigration statistics from 1913 to 1929.
The Italian population in Canada can be divided into three professional categories: the first is that of shopkeepers, small traders, workers in general who live in the large cities of Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Vancouver, Edmonton, Sydney, Windsor, Sault Sainte- Marie, Sudbury, etc.; to this category we can also aggregate the workers involved in outdoor works, canals, railway constructions, who go to the big cities mostly during the winter season when the aforementioned works cease almost completely.
The miners mostly belong to a second category of workers, both those involved in the internal work of the mines, and those involved in external works of them, that is, excavation and excavation work; the former, the miners proper, are mostly Italians from the north; the latter mostly from the south; Italian miners are found especially in Nova Scotia (Sydney and Glace Bay), where the important mines of the Dominion Coal Company and the workshops of the British Empire Steel Corporation are located; in the mining district of Porcupine (Timmins and Cobalt), located on the Temiskaming Northern Ontario line, where they are involved in gold and silver mines, and finally in various mining districts of Alberta and British Columbia. A third category of Italian immigrants is that of settlers, homesteads in the province of the prairies (grain cultivation) and in British Columbia (mixed cultivation and fruit growing). In Canada, Italians form associations of brotherhood and mutual aid: even the smallest Italian communities have their own society, which sometimes groups together only the emigrants of a given province of Italy, sometimes those of a single country.. Among the Italian societies the Order of the Sons of Italy stands out, which has patriotic and humanitarian purposes, and which has recently developed from the United States to Canada as well. It is represented by various sections, called lodges, which have a total of about two thousand effective members. Montreal, the city most populated by Italians in the whole Dominion, also has an Italian orphanage (Rue Saint-André n. 183) which has filled a lamented gap in our colonies.
