Closed windows, open doors: geopolitics and post-1949 mainland Chinese immigration to Canada

ID:	HARP-183
Title:	Closed windows, open doors: geopolitics and post-1949 mainland Chinese immigration to Canada
Source:	Canadian Geographer, v.40(4) Winter, 1996 pg 306-319
Parties:
Dispute Resolution Organ:
Year:	1996
Pages:	0
Author(s):
Keywords:	Canada, China/Chinese, discrimination, human rights, movement and residency, civil and political rights, Geography, immigration, minority rights
Abstract:	Since 1949 there have been dramatic changes in the flow of migrants from Mainland China to Canada, which existing structural models of migration, emphasizing factors in the destination country, do not fully capture. Conditions in the country of origin, and geopolitical relationships between China and Canada, played a decisive role in this migration. Even though Canada in theory opened a window for family reunification in the postwar era by removing long-standing discriminatory clauses blocking Chinese immigration, in practice cold war geopolitics led the Chinese to shut that window, blocking nearly all emigation. Changing geopolitical circumstances led China to develop an open-door policy between 1973 and 1989, leading to increasing flows of migrants to Canada. The political response in Canada to the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 was to allow all Chinese students and workers in Canada to stay, if they so wished, under the OM-IS-399 Policy. The result was a large inflow making MCIS the third-largest group of immigrants to Canada in the early 1990s.
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