Summary of non fiction book

SUMMARY OF NON-FICTION BOOK
July 22, 2007
Yumiko Kose

According to the writers, Yasmeen Abu-Laban and Christine Gabriel

in their book “SELLING DIVERSITY”(broadview press, 2002), in

Canada, immigration policy has played an important role in the

history and the evolution of the country. The writers explains that

two issues have been important in the history of immigration policy ---

the first issue is related to cultural considerations of religion, race, and

ethnicity, which favoured white, particularly British-origin,

Protestants, who were considered as “model citizens” and the second

issue relates to the needs of labour market, which required

non-English, non-Protestant immigrants, who were considered as “not

ideal.”

The writers reveal the fact that Asian women were discouraged from

entering Canada because of the concern for racial purity, though men from

Asian countries were allowed to come to the country as “cheap labour.”

They state that Asian and blacks were most despised group, and women

from “preferred group”, white British, were encouraged to enter Canada

The writers note that in the early twentieth century, Canada, for the first

time, attempted to recruit settlers from Southern and Eastern Europe to

populate the west of Canada and to discourage the entry of blacks from

America. The writers found that various reasons were legally used to

keep immigrants from outside of Europe from entering Canada.

The writers report that many people including most Aboriginal peoples,

the Chinese, East Indians, the Japanese, and women were denied the

political right to vote and run for office. They say “the introduction of

the Canadian Citizenship Act in 1947 marked the beginning of a period

when many of the explicit barriers to the formal rights of citizenship were

removed”(Yasmeen Abu-Laban and Christian Gabriel, 2002, p.43).

They note that a new evaluation system called “point system” was

introduced to assess all immigrants in 1967 and it was tied to the needs of

labour market. The also note that refugees are not required the point

system but they are selected by being asked a series of questions about

knowledge of official languages or educational levels.


The writers found that applicants from countries with educational

opportunities and men with high-skills were favoured in the point system

and it indicated biases within the point system.

The writers state that “Canada’s historical construction and patterns of

migration were interwoven with Europe (France and particularly

Britain)” (Yasmeen Abu-Laban and Cristian Gabriel, 2002, p.54). They

present that reform after 1960 abandoned policies of racial and ethnic

discrimination. They also found the effect of the reform clearly appeared in

the change of immigrant groups, higher number of Asian immigrants and

less European immigrants. In conclusion, the writers observed that

policy-makers and elected officials have stressed that immigration policy

should be seen in the larger international and globalizing context.