The early 20th century was a time of extensive labour strife in Canada. The 1919 Winnipeg General Strike, for example, revealed both the strength that organized labour could raise as well as the formidable forces that it often confronted. For 42 days, workers brought the city to a standstill, but the state was ultimately able to end the strike by arresting labour leaders and deploying police to break up public meetings, resulting in the death of two civilians on June 21 - "Bloody Saturday."

The strike also showed that business and government leaders alike feared not only organized labour but immigrant labour as well. Foreign-born workers were predominantly confined to the most exploitative and least secure jobs. As a result, many turned to organized labour to promote and protect their interests. This gave business and government leaders an excuse to blame immigrants for labour unrest and deny its domestic roots in the Canadian economic system. It also, to their minds, justified their deportation.

Over a 25-year period, tens of thousands of immigrants were removed from Canada on various grounds in a highly arbitrary and often illegal process. For example, in June 1919 a group of immigrant workers were arrested in an effort to undermine support for the Winnipeg strike. They were not put before a Board of Inquiry as the Immigration Act required: they were sent to an internment camp for "enemy aliens" and quietly expelled, despite the protests of their lawyers.
 

Targeting Immigrant Labour

This was not an isolated or even uncommon incident. During the economic uncertainty of the early 1900s, government was under pressure from municipalities to reduce the costs of public relief and from business leaders to crack down on labour activism. The creation of a more extensive and proactive deportation system proved effective and meshed well with prevailing racist attitudes towards non-British immigrants.

Previously, immigration officials had concentrated on removing immigrants who suffered from long-term illnesses, could not work, or (focusing on single women) exhibited "immoral" tendencies. After 1906, their emphasis shifted to labour activists and the unemployed. Until the mid-1930s, changes in Canadian law and policy consistently increased state powers to find, apprehend, detain, examine, and deport immigrants. People had little recourse to the courts, and officials often worked outside of the law.

Deporting Immigrant Labour Activists

During World War I, immigration officials often circumvented the provisions of the Immigration Act by placing people in internment camps. Thus, Tom Taschuk, who officials charged with being a "socialist, with Bolshevik tendencies, who has been actively engaged in endeavouring to create discontent and rebellion in the foreign element in Canada," was interned as an "enemy alien" because he could not legally be deported due to the length of his time in the country. Officials knew that a person whose case would not stand up to judicial scrutiny could easily be deported once interned. Elle Saborceki, a German immigrant, was charged with associating with unidentified "enemy aliens," alleged to be a Communist, and declared a "revolutionist of a pronounced type." She, too, was interned and then deported in 1920.

Before and after the war, officials bypassed the law by moving immigrants far from where they were arrested, making it more difficult for them to get legal representation. For example, on May Day 1932, 10 activists were arrested in six different cities on the grounds that they were Communists and therefore necessarily advocated the use of force to overthrow the government. They were immediately sent to Halifax and within days had been put before a Board of Inquiry and deported. The charges against one of the men, Arvo Vaara, is representative of the reasoning applied to each: "He is a menace to Canada and to the existing economic and governmental structure of this country."

Immigrants were deported even in the face of evidence that their lives could be in danger in their countries of origin. For example, officials had reports from the RCMP and foreign governments that countries such as Bulgaria, Finland, and Yugoslavia persecuted communists. However, their reaction on learning that two men had escaped while being deported to Yugoslavia, knowing that the men would have been put to death, was to tighten security measures to ensure that such escapes became impossible.
 

"Exporting" the Unemployed

During the Depression, thousands of workers lost their jobs and had to seek public relief. In an effort to limit their expenses, many municipalities asked the federal government to deport unemployed immigrant workers. Between 1929-30 and 1934-35, 17,220 immigrants (not including dependants) were removed on the grounds that they had become "public charges." Some had accepted little more than a few dollars. Others were deported on alternative grounds, such as a conviction for vagrancy, while single women with children risked being labeled "immoral" and "undesirable" and were therefore deported. In short, "When cheap labour became redundant labour, the Department got rid of it."

Many labour activists could also be removed if they were unemployed. Immigration officials developed a system whereby, having identified individuals as being "politically undesirable," they methodically searched for a ground on which to deport them. Thus, immigrants were often formally deported for taking relief or vagrancy when the real (undeclared) reason was the fact that they were working on behalf of the rights of labour.
 

Organized Labour and Immigrant Workers:

Throughout this period, organized labour tried to protect immigrant workers. Thousands of foreign-born workers signed up with the IWW, the One Big Union, the Communist Party, and other organizations. The Canadian Labor Defence League intervened in numerous court cases, while papers like the Canadian Labor Defender often provided a lone voice on behalf of the deported. And there were some, although few, success stories. For example, lawyers from the Winnipeg Trades and Labor Council were able to show before a Board of Inquiry that the cases against 3 immigrant workers arrested during the Winnipeg General Strike were without foundation and the men were set free.

As public awareness grew in 1930s, opinion came out more firmly against the wholesale deportation of the unemployed and labour activists. Civil libertarians and editorialists joined with unions and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation to protest Canadian policy. As well, with economic expansion in 1935, business again became interested in securing immigrant labour. Immigration officials, for their part, turned their focus from deporting those in Canada to keeping out those -- particularly Jewish refugees in Europe -- seeking to come in.