Smoking Out the Snakeheads As the war approached, the government prepared a secret action plan to counter a surge in Chinese immigrants. In the eyes of Prime Minister Mackenzie King, Chinese labourers were not immigrants, but refugees fleeing an Asian civil war. The Chinese Exclusion Act had kept out Chinese labourers, but with that law now null and void, there was a pressing need to keep out more people. The plan called for the implementation of a visa system in advance of the war. The prime minister ordered the Passport Board to create a system to give every person who applied for a temporary residence permit the coveted label, "War Evacuee." The War Evacuation Commission, as it was officially called, gave priority to young men and women "physically fit for service in the armed forces." (An estimated one-third of the Chinese on the West Coast were men.) The plan was "designed to exclude the undesirables" while at the same time keeping the healthy and able-bodied from migrating en masse to Canada. The number of refugees admitted would be determined by economic considerations. In an address to the House of Commons on March 31, 1939, King stated his case to the House, "If I were a Chinese working in Canada, I would go home and stay home. We would want him to stay home if we were in China." The "stampede" of the Chinese "bears a very ugly resemblance to the great invasion by hordes of immigrants of the early days of this country." —Prime Minister Mackenzie King, December 8, 1940. The War Evacuation Commission began allocating war evacuee designations to Chinese men and women in 1940, long before the war in Europe began, and the federal government extended the application process as late as August 1939. The system was voluntary and designed to be self-policing. Applicants were granted a limited-term temporary residence permit. Once in Canada, they were not eligible for permanent-residence status and their status changed once their country was declared non-belligerent. In accordance with their assigned "status," Chinese refugees would be assigned to one of four occupational categories, and each group was sent to different parts of Canada. Those with technical and professional skills were sent to Vancouver; those with farming skills were sent to southern Saskatchewan, and young men, deemed by the government to be more likely to become involved in a labour dispute, were sent to farms in Alberta and Saskatchewan. The War Evacuation Commission had first met in January 1939 and was in charge of Chinese labourers until the end of the war. The prime minister was pleased with the government's preparations and in April 1940 he announced the creation of the Canadian Council on National Defence (CCND), an advisory body that would oversee and advise the federal government on immigration. The CCND would "furnish all the necessary information and study upon which the government will base its plans for immigration." In the fall of 1940, Prime Minister King told the House of Commons that he "does not think there is need of bringing into the country any large number of persons." Although the Canadian government's immigration policy had developed on the principle of limiting the entry of newcomers, it had not considered its obligations to the Chinese. As a result, there was great confusion and uncertainty in the immigration department over what to do with Chinese immigrants who were not being sent to war industries. In a 1939 report, the CCND urged the government to open the door to Chinese immigrants who were "physically fit for the service of our armed forces." Under the CCND's proposal, all those Chinese who were not considered essential for agricultural labour would be "evacuated" to Vancouver. This would mean accepting Chinese families into Canada, many of whom had their own land and businesses back in China. It was feared that if they were not allocated to war work in Canada, they might settle in Canada and become a permanent drain on the state. A new group of Chinese war refugees, this time from China, were also given special status. The government feared that some might want to return to their home country, in part because China had been occupied by Japan. A War Evacuation Commission report stated that it "was felt that those who had been abroad during the period of Japanese occupation would be inclined to return to China with the intention of taking part in the Communist struggle there." All were in the age range of conscription (18 to 65). In addition, the government would allow 5,600 people who were in Japan as "repatriates" to enter Canada, with plans to admit them under the War Evacuation Commission plan. Of those who were selected as war refugees, 1,320 were female heads of households or unaccompanied women who were deemed by the Commission to be "indispensable to family support" because they were single females or because of the "husband's present war service." The number of war evacuees from China was higher than expected. In 1938, there were about 40,000 people of Chinese origin living in Canada. In the beginning of 1940, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, and Australia were on war alert. After Pearl Harbor in December 1941, people of Chinese origin were viewed as "enemies" of the Allies and Canada took no additional steps to admit them to Canada. Chinese war refugees from China were welcomed by the federal government as war evacuees from Canada and were sent to Vancouver, where they formed the Chinese Canadian community. The Chinese community that resulted was composed almost entirely of refugees from China. Most lived in the Chinatown in Vancouver or the neighbourhood known as the Strathcona area. Although many had family who were able to support themselves in China, they were sponsored and assisted by the Canadian government and the consulates of Hong Kong and Shanghai. The federal government provided a monthly allowance for each evacuee as well as the cost of immigration costs and the cost of acquiring and registering a house or property. By the end of the war, 621 Chinese people had come to Canada through the War Evacuation Commission and an additional 1,932 had arrived under the repatriation program. From this point on, the British Columbia provincial government and the Canadian federal government treated Chinese Canadians as a distinct group with particular needs. A war refugee was a Canadian who had no choice in leaving his or her homeland in Canada and was not returning to their country. Refugees had to leave their country because of reasons related to race, religion, politics, and social conditions. In 1940, the federal government introduced new legislation to establish a policy that applied only to war evacuees. The Refugee Restriction Act of that year made it a crime to leave Canada without the consent of the government and it extended the pre-war definition of an undesirable person to include "enemy aliens." Those who were deemed not to be refugees under the War Evacuation Commission were rejected for permanent-residence status. Canada was perceived to be safe for people of European, Jewish, and Asian origins. This was due in part to an active effort by both the federal and provincial governments to enforce immigration laws. The government began advertising its willingness to accept refugees who were not designated as war evacuees. As a result of post-war immigration legislation and the work of the CCND, the Canadian government established a policy of importing labour to Canada. Postwar immigration legislation targeted specific "problem peoples," including persons of Asian descent, who would soon play a pivotal role in establishing the foundations of multiculturalism in Canada. **The White Paper** In 1947, the Canadian government called a special parliamentary committee to consider the impact of immigration on national unity and to discuss the question of whether Canada had done enough to encourage the immigration of people from Asia and other countries. The federal government had already begun work on the issue of immigration policy. In 1941, the government created a sub-committee to investigate Canada's immigration and settlement policy. A report by the sub-committee, _Canada Needs Immigrants,_ concluded that immigration had had a positive impact on the nation's development, but that a "serious problem" had arisen over the "disproportionate number of immigrants from some parts of the world." In its final report, the sub-committee reported that in spite of a serious situation in which immigrants "have no family ties, or friends" in Canada and little knowledge of the country, and given "the strong movement in favour of limiting or restricting the number of immigrants," the government should retain its present immigration policy. It recommended that the federal government introduce a multilateral immigration program that would lead to an annual immigration quota of 75,000. This quota was to be divided into two categories: the first category was to be composed of immigrants of "cultivated European stock" and would include immigrants who spoke one of the official languages of Canada, had the potential to integrate into the "cultural, economic and social life of the country," and "could not be considered an economic burden on the host country." The second category was "undesirable aliens," whose integration into Canadian society was deemed "impossible" and who were to be concentrated in areas designated as "immigrant settlement areas." The Immigration Department of Canada had already prepared a plan to encourage and assist the immigration of Chinese men, but to encourage Chinese women to immigrate to Canada, the government began advertising for "Chinese married women" who were "accustomed to the culture of Western civilization." In 1949, the Canadian government created the National Advisory Committee on Welfare and Rehabilitation of Chinese Canadians. Formed in 1951, this committee was responsible for assisting Chinese war refugees. Through an act of national concern that permitted Asian refugees in foreign lands to settle permanently in