“When Human Need Has Been Apparent, Canadians Have Opened Their Arms”: Critiquing the Trudeau Government’s Motivations for the Resettlement of Ugandan Asians in 1972
MA in Refugee Protection and Forced Migration Studies
Jesse O’Reilly-Conlin
Abstract
In the post-WWII world, international organizations, political and religious leaders, as well as the media have often praised Canada for its treatment of refugees and for putting humanitarian objectives in front of other, less altruistic motivations—that is, an agenda prioritizing state needs over the wellbeing of the persons in question. Indeed, a mythology exists among the Canadian public concerning their country’s history as a humanitarian nation and as a safe haven for refugees. Yet even a cursory historical examination of Canada’s reception of refugees troubles such a simplistic portrayal and underscores how less noble and altruistic factors often influenced how Canadian political leaders responded to refugee crises and resettled large numbers of refugees. This is particularly true for the Ugandan crisis of 1972.
Traditional scholarship as well as journalistic coverage often presents the Trudeau government’s resettlement of the thousands of Ugandan Asians expelled by Ugandan president Idi Amin in 1972 as a paradigm shift in how Canada reacted to large-scale refugee situations—it was the first time Canada resettled a large group of nonwhite and non-Christian refugees. As a result, the event has come to represent an important step on Canada’s “linear, progressive march toward increasingly liberal and race-neutral immigration regulations” as well as unproblematic example of Canada’s position as a humanitarian nation (Madokoro, 2018, pp. 161-162).
However, through historical discourse analysis, this paper reveals the Trudeau government’s reaction to Amin’s expulsion order symbolized a continuation, rather than a break, with the status quo: state interest and exclusionary policies still informed Canada’s response to these refugees, albeit with important differences. Indeed, Canada’s response to the Ugandan Asian exodus was driven by both economic as well as foreign policy factors—not humanitarian ones.
Chapter One: Introduction
1.1 Overview
On August 25, 1972, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau announced that the country would accept up to 3,000 of the approximately 80,000 Ugandan Asians[1] ordered expelled from Uganda for, claimed Idi Amin, “sabotaging” the economy. Trudeau described his government’s intention in humanitarian terms and noted the desire to help not only the Ugandan Asians but also the British people: “In an attempt to ease the effect of this humanitarian problem, both of those forced out of Uganda and on the people of Britain who would otherwise be forced to share their already overcrowded island with a tide of involuntary immigrants, the Canadian government is prepared to offer assistance.”[2] He welcomed these Ugandan Asians an “honourable place in Canadian life” and felt confident that they would by “their abilities and industry” make an “equally important contribution to Canadian life.”[3] The British government praised the Canadian government’s action: “We are very grateful for this offer from Mr. Trudeau. It’s the kind of genuinely humane action that is needed to deal with this critical problem…. We have always believed Canada would do its utmost.”[4]
In Canada, though, Trudeau and his Liberal Party colleagues, with a federal election looming on October 30, faced scrutiny from a public curious as to why they planned on helping foreigners when Canadians were facing high unemployment. On the campaign trail, Trudeau defended his decision in the name of compassion and argued he was following Canada’s proud tradition of accepting refugees.[5] At a stop in St. Catharines, Ontario, on September 24, he said that if Canadians had ignored the Ugandan Asians’ suffering, “We would have been false to ourselves, false to our history … We would not have been Canadians if we had turned our back on them.”[6] He equated Canadian identity with a responsibility to help people in need: “When human need has been apparent, Canadians have opened their arms. Refugees from Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Tibet have come to Canada in their tens of thousands. We welcomed them without question because they were in need.”[7] Trudeau asked his listeners by which qualities they wanted their country defined: “If we regard Canada as a human place, as I believe it is, we do so because our interest and concern in others … is not merely sympathy and understanding but compassion and love.”[8]
History has largely confirmed Trudeau’s predictions: the Ugandan Asians, by and large, have found an honourable place in Canadian life. By the end of 1974, the Canadian government had resettled almost 8,000 Ugandan Asians—the largest resettlement of nonwhite and non-Christian refugees in Canada up to that time. Despite this, the group integrated relatively seamlessly into Canadian society. After their initial arrival to the country, 3,300 Ugandan Asians received government assistance in some form; by September of 1973, that number had dropped to fewer than 150 people and by October, 89 percent had found employment.[9] Some see the episode as a successful example of government-supported integration: “The experience of the Ugandan Asians reinforces the importance of collaboration between government and citizens in creating a welcoming and inclusive environment for newly arrived refugees. If we want to replicate this example, public funding is essential for the numerous settlement agencies that will help refugees integrate into Canadian society.”[10] Moreover, in November 2016, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation ran an hour-long special fondly looking back at this important even in Canadian history and interviewing several of the refugees themselves about their experiences both in Uganda and Canada.[11]
Such an interpretation of Canada’s response to the Uganda crisis—one motivated by compassion and humanitarian concerns—fits nicely into the standard discourse surrounding Canada’s historic treatment of refugees. In the post-WWII world, international organizations, political and religious leaders, as well as the media, have often praised Canada for its treatment of refugees and for putting humanitarian objectives in front of other, less altruistic motivations—that is, an agenda prioritizing state needs over the wellbeing of the persons in question.[12] Indeed, a mythology exists among the Canadian public concerning their country’s history as a humanitarian nation and as a safe haven for refugees. As Troper notes, “By the 1970s, it was widely held that Canada was then and always had been a haven for the oppressed. In retrospect the public imagination turned a select series of economically beneficial refugee resettlement programs into a massive and longstanding Canadian humanitarian resolve on behalf of refugees.”[13] Indeed, even a cursory historical examination of Canada’s reception of refugees underscores how less noble and altruistic factors often influenced how Canadian political leaders responded to refugee crises and resettled large numbers of refugees. This is particularly true for the Ugandan crisis of 1972.
Traditional scholarship as well as journalistic coverage often presents the Trudeau government’s resettlement of the thousands of Ugandan Asians expelled by Ugandan president Amin in 1972 as a paradigm shift in how Canada reacted to large-scale refugee situations—it was the first time Canada resettled a large group of nonwhite and non-Christian refugees. As a result, the event has come to represent an important step on Canada’s “linear, progressive march toward increasingly liberal and race-neutral immigration regulations”[14] as well as unproblematic example of Canada’s position as a humanitarian nation. In terms of the Ugandan case, even before Amin expelled the Ugandan Asians, Canadian immigration officials had been aware of their professional capabilities and of the substantial contribution they could make to the Canadian economy, and it was these economic motivations, more so than humanitarian concerns, that directly influenced their desire to participate in their evacuation and eventual resettlement. Moreover, the personal relationship between Pierre Elliot Trudeau and the Aga Khan—the spiritual leader of the Ismaili Shia Muslims, of which several thousand lived in Uganda—also influenced the Canadian government’s decision to accept these refugees, much to the detriment of the non-Ismailis among the Ugandan Asians. Thus, through historical discourse analysis, this paper reveals Canada’s reaction to Amin’s expulsion order symbolized a continuation, rather than a break, with the status quo: state interest and exclusionary policies still informed Canada’s response to these refugees, albeit with important differences.
1.2 Historical Context
1.2.1 The Ugandan Asians
Trading networks have connected East Africa and the Indian subcontinent since time immemorial, yet South Asian migrants did not arrive in large numbers until the 1840s, when they established themselves as merchants of slaves and ivory under the Omani sultanate in Zanzibar.[15] With the advent of the Scramble of Africa and the British establishment of colonies in Kenya and Uganda, the British imported more and more indentured servants (or “coolies”) to work as labourers on large-scale infrastructure projects—tens of thousands of migrants were recruited to build the Uganda railway between 1896 and 1901.[16] The British government signed the Indian Emigration Act of 1883, which removed any restrictions for the legal movement of South Asians, indentured labourer or otherwise, from British India to British East Africa. Beyond labourers, the British also recruited government officials, particularly Goans, to reproduce the Indian colonial bureaucratic system in East Africa.[17] As the British penetrated further inland and the railway linked to coast to Kisumu on Lake Victoria, South Asian merchants and labourers followed.
During the colonial period, the Ugandan Asians rose in prominence and status, becoming so-called middlemen between the European minority and the African majority—the middle meat in the colonial sandwich.[18] They dominated most professional professions and enjoyed a middle-class lifestyle, often living apart both physically and culturally from the African majority. Their successfulness often incited jealously, suspicion, and contempt among the Africans, which only exacerbated at independence in 1962, when many Asians chose British citizenship.[19] Because of such mistrust, as well as from the newly formed Ugandan government’s genuine desire to redistribute both wealth and opportunity after decades of colonial imposed segregation, Milton Obote’s Africanization programs targeted many Ugandan Asian groups. The Trade Licensing Act of 1969 as well as the Ugandan Immigration Act of 1970, for example, severely limited the rights of Ugandan Asians to live and work in Uganda, resulting in unemployment and family separation.[20] The governments of Tanzania and Kenya also initiated their own Africanization programs.
Despite these discriminatory pieces of legislation and the general feelings of antipathy towards the South Asian population, this group still figured greatly among many of the professional positions on the eve of their expulsion from Uganda. Thus, when Amin took power in 1971 from Obote in a coup d’état, the South Asians were still a critical cog in the Ugandan economy, and their relative prosperity would serve for Amin as the perfect scapegoat to secure his position. The impoverished and unequal society that British colonialism produced in Uganda needed urgent solutions, yet Amin would use his citizenry’s legitimate grievances to demonize and ultimately ruin a community who had played a vital role in the country’s development for over one hundred years. Indeed, the ultimate losers in Amin’s expulsion degree and his later reign of terror would not be the South Asians or Amin but the Africans themselves.[21]
1.2.2 The International Response
On August 5, Amin ordered the expulsion of the estimated 80,000 Ugandan Asians living in the country and gave them three months to leave on the risk of possible internment. At first, Amin’s order was directed at the approximately 50,000 Asians holding British passports, but he soon revised his original position to include all noncitizens. Then, two weeks later on August 21, he declared that even Asians holding Ugandan citizenship would have to leave the country. Since Amin never formally registered the number of Ugandan Asians in the country, it was difficult to ascertain the exact number of people falling into each category. According to Nicolas Van Hear, among the noncitizens, 36,000 held British passports, 9,000 Indian passports, 1,750, Kenyan passports, and 250 Pakistani passports; there were 26,650 Ugandan citizens, including 12,000 individuals still waiting to have their citizenship confirmed by Ugandan officials at the time of the expulsion. For this latter group, Amin’s decree rendered them stateless.[22]
On August 12, Geoffrey Rippon, an important British diplomat, announced from Kampala—after failing to persuade Amin to change his mind about either the expulsion or the deadline—that Britain would accept responsibility for those Asians with British passports: “It people are expelled and they are United Kingdom passport holders, then however unreasonable that expulsion be and however inhumane and unjust the conditions it is brought about, we have to accept responsibility.”[23] However, Rippon did hint at Britain’s expectation that other countries, particularly those of the Commonwealth, would assist in the evacuation and resettlement.
On August 18, the British government contacted Canadian officials and asked for their assistance. The memo noted that since Britain already accepted some 14,000 South Asian immigrants a year from East Africa and India, under its voucher system for admitting its former colonial subjects, an additional 50,000 would strain race relations in Britain.[24] As a result, the British government hoped Canada could accept some of those individuals being expelled from Uganda, who, the memo did not fail to mention, “are all English speaking and … are not without some resources of their own.”[25] The memo also stated that the British government would also ask the governments of Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh for assistance. In total, the British resettled approximately 27,000 Ugandan Asians.
In response to the British call for assistance, the Trudeau cabinet convened in Ottawa on August 24 and decided resettle up to 3,000 of the Ugandan refugees according to normal immigration criteria. However, early reports from the team in Kampala indicated that 3,000 applicants would meet normal immigration criteria by the end of September; thus, on September 13, the cabinet decided to admit more qualified refugees and a maximum of 1,000 humanitarian cases, who did not meet the normal requirements but would likely become successfully established in Canada.[26] By the end of expulsion period, the Kampala team had issued 6,292 visas to Ugandan Asians; 4,420 of them had arrived to Canada via chartered aircrafts, whereas the rest made their way independently.[27]
Beyond the British and Canadian efforts, several hundred Ugandan Asians also went to the United States, Denmark, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, and India.
African leaders condemned Amin’s expulsion order. President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania responded to the Ugandan leader’s behaviour in sharp terms: “Every racialist in the world is an animal of some kind or another, and all are kinds which have no future. Eventually, they will all become extinct.”[28] Despite initiating nationalization policies that directly affected Asians in Tanzania, Nyerere promised not to follow Amin’s path towards expulsion and offered the British the use of Tanzanian airports to facilitate the evacuation. In terms of resettling any of the refugees, the government declined.[29]
Kenneth Kuanda of Zambia also denounced Amin’s actions—“It is not right to commit another wrong because of British actions many years ago. What happened in Uganda is terrible, horrible, abominable, and shameful”[30]—as did Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, but neither provided a safe haven for the refugees.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was not initially involved in the evacuation, since neither Uganda nor any of the other participating countries had asked them to aid in the Kampala mission. However, the organization noted that if Uganda Asians began pouring into neighbouring countries, it would provide support to those governments upon request.[31] As the November 8 deadline approached, however, officials in Uganda became alarmed that a significant number of Ugandan Asians had not been granted visas by any country; they estimated that close to 4,200 Ugandan Asians lacked documentation and were on the verge of becoming stateless. Since these individuals had crossed no international border and remained in Uganda, they were not technically refugees[32] and were outside UNHCR’s official purview. Yet on the ground in Uganda, with the permission of the Ugandan authorities, the United Nations (UN) partnered with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (ICEM) to arrange the movement from Uganda of those undocumented persons while the UNHCR secured temporary transit centres for them in Europe.[33]
1.2.3 A Brief History of Canadian Immigration and Refugee Policy to 1976
1.2.3.1 Immigration
As much as Canadian history since European settlement has been defined by immigration, it has also been defined by exclusion. From confederation in 1867 to the introduction of the points system one hundred years in later 1967, racism and discrimination guided the drafting and implementation of Canadian immigration policy. John A. MacDonald, the father of Canadian confederation, and his Conservative Party of Canada introduced the first piece of Canadian legislation to target a particular ethnic group for exclusion, the Chinse Immigration Act of 1885, which imposed a duty of $50 on every Chinese person seeking entry into Canada.[34] Concern over relatively large numbers of immigrants arriving from Central and Southern Europe and the threat they posed to Anglo-Saxon norms led to the creation of the Immigration Act of 1906, a remarkably discriminatory document that forbade entry of those with sight, speech, or hearing impairments as well as anyone deemed of low moral fibre, including prostitutes.[35] Although the Act did not target any one ethnic group, it gave the federal cabinet power to bar any class of immigrant whenever it deemed necessary; the 1910 Immigration Act, meanwhile, expanded the list of groups denied entry to Canada and further increased the government’s control over immigration, especially related to judicial oversight concerning unlawful deportations, of which there was little.[36] And amid the turmoil of the Great Depression, in 1931, the Robert Bennet government introduced an order-in-council that limited immigration to only American and British subjects who could financially support themselves.[37]
In the aftermath of the Holocaust and the rise of a global human rights culture, especially as it manifested in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Canada had a more difficult time rationalizing its discriminatory immigration policies at home while championing democratic principles and international human rights abroad. Whereas the Immigration Act of 1952 still permitted immigration officials to exclude people based on their nationality, geographical area of origin, or cultural habits, by 1962, the Diefenbaker government had undertaken the first efforts to implement a universal admissions policy, and by 1967, the Pearson government had introduced the point systems, which revolutionized Canadian immigration.[38] Applicants would be awarded points based on well they scored in certain categories, including education, occupational skills, employment prospects, age, English and/or French language skills, as well as personal characteristics. Applicants scoring fifty points or more out of a possible one hundred were granted entry, no matter their racial, ethnic, or national origin.[39] One hundred years after Confederation, Canada’s immigration system was no longer overtly discriminatory.
1.2.3.2 Refugees
Prior to the Second World War, Canada’s record of helping refugees was abysmal. In the aftermath of the First World War, the Canadian government refused to resettle any of the displaced in Europe, for fear that once they arrived, Canadian immigration officials could not deport them. With the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s, the then government of Canada, led by Prime Minister McKenzie King, did next nothing to help those Jewish people fleeing persecution and violence. The government’s indifference culminated in its refusal to admit the 907 Jewish refugees aboard the St. Louis, which had set sail from Hamburg looking for sanctuary and refuge. The ship ultimately returned to Europe, and most of the passengers died in the Holocaust. Between 1933 and 1945, the twelve years Nazis held power, Canada only accepted 5,000 Jewish refugees.[40]
Between 1946 and 1962, Canada admitted close to 250,000 refugees, including 37,000 Hungarians fleeing Soviet oppression in 1956 and 1957. Yet the Canadian government had no planned program concerning the admission of refugees, as decisions were often made on an ad hoc basis. The political motivations, economic self-interest, and even racial prejudice of the Canadian government often dictated which refugees would be sponsored by the government for admission into Canada. Indeed, refugees were often subjected to the same entry requirements as prospective immigrants, with what they could offer Canada prioritized by decision makers. Canada chose refugees—as John Holmes, an external affairs officer, once said—“like good beef cattle.”[41]
With the rise of worldwide concern over the fate of refugees into the 1950s and 1960s—exemplified by the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (the “1951 Refugee Convention,” hereafter) and 1959 being acknowledged the year of the refugee—Canada found it increasingly difficult to justify its ad hoc and politically motivated responses to refugee situations. In 1969, it finally signed the 1951 Refugee Convention as well as its 1967 protocol, and in 1970, it introduced the “oppressed minorities clauses,” which allowed oppressed asylum seekers who did not meet the 1951 refugee requirements to claim refuge in Canada if there happened to be sufficient resources available.
Canadian law did not separate the categories of immigrant and refugee until the Immigration Act of 1976. The Act laid down the fundamental principles and objectives of Canadian immigration policy, including promoting Canada’s demographic, economic, cultural, and social goals; fulfilling Canada’s international obligations pertaining to the 1951 Refugee Convention as well as its 1967 Protocol; and establishing nondiscrimination in immigration policy. In terms of refugee protection, the Act recognized two categories: refugees who fitted the 1951 definition as well as persecuted and displaced persons who did not fit the UN definition but who, nevertheless, were offered protection for humanitarian reasons. The inclusion of refugees into Canadian immigration law as a distinct category from immigrants finally recognized Canada’s obligations to stop deporting foreign nationals to countries where they feared persecution and to establish criteria for the determination of refugee status.[42]
1.3 Literature Review, Methods, and Research Question
1.3.1 Literature Review
1.3.1.1 The Importance of Critical Refugee History
Scholars have often accused the field of refugee and forced migration studies of being ahistorical.[43] Yet research about refugee experiences and responses to refugees in the past can reveal much about the present. Such a reorientation forces scholars to “look beyond the categories and concerns of policymakers to frame questions that are more analytically meaningful in the specific refugee contexts in question.”[44] In my case, a more thorough examination of the 1972 Ugandan exodus helps to interrogate many firmly held assumptions about Canadian generosity and humanitarianism in its treatment of refugees.
As it stands, a lacuna exists in critical Canadian refugee history. With a few exceptions,[45] such research generally falls into two categories: the general survey and the heroic and/or descriptive. Usually, refugee history is subsumed under the history of Canadian immigration; authors identify important legislation as well as important moments concerning Canada’s acceptance of refugees, yet they do not examine them in any real depth. Each episode is usually written as one step on the ladder from a more restrictive approach to refugees to a more generous one.[46]
The heroic and/or descriptive category, in contrast, does deeply examine a particular episode but either does in a descriptive fashion—as in Raska’s Czech Refugees in Cold War Canada: 1945-1989[47]—or as a heroic account with little critical analysis. In Running on Empty, for example, Mike Molloy, a former foreign service officer who played a large role in settling both Ugandan and Vietnamese refugees, and colleagues offer a celebratory, almost heroic, recounting of Canada’s response to Vietnamese refugees during the late 1970s and 1980s following the end of the United States’ war in Vietnam, when the country rallied together, put humanitarianism before politics, and rescued 60,000 refugees.[48]
Yet such a benevolent portrayal of Canada’s refugee history overlooks some inconsistences in Canada’s treatment of various refugee groups and silences questions relating to why some refugees groups were prioritized. It ignores the larger forces at play that might have affected how government responded to an influx of refugees. As the political scientist Dirks asked over forty years ago, why did “in some circumstances the government and public [welcome] refugees and on other occasions, ignored their appeals”[49] (1977, p. xii). This research attempts to answer this question through exploring the factors that made the Ugandan group particularly appealing to the Canadian government.
In terms of the Uganda episode itself, the literature has not explored alternative reasons for the Trudeau’s government resettling of the Ugandan Asians in any detail. Kelley and Trebilcock in The Making of the Mosaic, for example, discuss how Canada was criticized in certain corners for “skimming the cream of the crop” in its selection of only skilled Ugandan refugees, but the authors ultimately state that the Trudeau government responded with “alacrity” despite “a worsening economic situation and a federal election in the offing.”[50] Troper, meanwhile, in is his survey of Canadian immigration policy since 1945, does critically analyze the Canadian government’s self-interested motivations for its implementation of various immigration laws and refugee resettlement schemes, yet when he explores the Ugandan exodus, he uses it to highlight Canada’s selective humanitarianism in resettling refugees.[51] He notes the sharp contrast in Canada’s response to the refugees produced by Amin’s 1972 expulsion order and General Pinochet’s 1973 military coup in Chile, in which the Ugandan refugees were largely welcomed by open arms and the Chileans ones were welcomed by suspicion, derision, and hostility. Troper ultimately argues that the Trudeau government’s cool reception of the Chilean refugees stemmed from their suspected socialist leanings as well as the government’s concern about angering the new Pinochet regime, especially considering the large-scale investments Canadian mining companies had made in the country.[52] Despite the soundness of Troper’s argument, he does not explore what made the Ugandan group so attractive to Canada, nor does he critique to any extent the notion that the Trudeau government’s response to the Ugandan Asians was indeed humanitarian.
To date, only one study has looked in detail at Canada’s reception of the Ugandan Asians expelled by Amin 1972—Shezan Muhammedi’s “‘Gifts from Amin’: The Resettlement, Integration, and Identities of Ugandan Asian Refugees in Canada.”[53] Although this well-researched dissertation does problematize Canada’s resettlement of these Ugandan Asians as strictly a humanitarian gesture, the study understands the Ugandan response as a successful example of a nonwhite and non-Christian group integrating into Canada, which given today’s intense discourse of Islamophobia, should serve as a template for future refugee resettlements. Moreover, Muhammedi suggests that Canada’s response to the crisis should be understood as both humanitarian and self-serving, yet he does not fully investigate how the economic motivations underlying the Trudeau government’s humanitarian language harmed those Ugandan Asians who possessed few qualities of benefit to the Canadian government. Muhammedi is far too dismissive of the deleterious effects of this humanitarian discourse employed by Trudeau and his colleagues, who, in the end, wanted to offer as little assistance as possible to reap the greatest benefit—in terms of both the skilled refugees they resettled as well as the international prestige such resettlement produced for Canada abroad. Indeed, this paper argues that through a humanitarian discourse, the Canadian government initiated a resettlement program that represented nothing more than a direct transfer of skilled professionals from a poorer country to a richer one.
1.3.1.2 An International Framework
This work also situates Canada’s resettlement of the Uganda refugees within the context of the Trudeau government’s foreign policy. Canadian historians have noted the dearth of studies dealing specifically with Canadian foreign policy, which has produced a body of work unable to “challenge orthodoxies,” resulting in both “romanticized notions of Canada’s international action” and the “lack of an effective countervailing voice”[54] to critique Canada’s alleged benevolent role on the world stage. The international framework also works to reveal how domestic trends influenced the Canadian government’s decision making and responses to international crises. One particular domestic concern that dominated the thinking of policymakers and parliamentarians in terms of how Canada should act in and towards the world was race. A new crop of scholars has centred race in their analysis of Canada’s foreign policy to “excavate the ideologies that informed Eurocentric and ethnocentric notions of Canada’s national identity”[55] and to challenge the idea that Canada’s history, in comparison to its southern neighbour, was race neutral. Race thinking,[56] or seeing the world through a racialized lens, explicitly defined Canada’s immigration and refugee program until recently and continues in more nuanced, subtle, and evasive ways.
1.3.2 Methods
1.3.2.1 Discourse Analysis
This study employs historical discourse analysis. Situating my work within the emerging disciplines of critical refugee studies and Canadian international history, I use critical discourse analysis to problematize Canada’s alleged humanitarian motivations for resettling 6,000 Ugandan Asians expelled from their country in 1972. Here, discourse is not understood simply as language used to describe reality; rather, discourse is the lens through which power and ideology make certain attitudes, opinions, and beliefs appear natural and common sense.[57] Discourse is forever tied with power. The historian, then, does not simply record and regurgitate facts; rather, the historian’s task is to unmask how a subject has become established as true or valid. She studies the historical processes through which ideologies become normative.[58]
In historical discourse analysis, the various social, political, and legal texts of a particular period are explored to understand how a particular category becomes constructed—in my case, this is the refugee in 1970s Canada. Discourse analysis excavates subjugated knowledges and is a method for working through the archives of society (in my case, immigration archives) to uncover the genealogy of how a society has come to understand a certain phenomenon; why some ideas and discourses have become self-evident and others not. Thus, I deconstruct the humanitarian language surrounding Canada’s acceptance of those Uganda Asian refugees to excavate the less altruistic motivations of Canadian officials.
Through data collection and analysis, I provide a detailed description of the Ugandan case, the important actors, the chronology of events, the debates, and the emerging issues and themes. Specifically, I examine and analyze the arrival of Ugandan refugees in the 1970s through in-depth archival research. In September 2019, I spent three weeks at the Library and Archives of Canada in Ottawa exploring files that dealt specifically with Canada’s decision to admit the Ugandan Asian refugees. In terms of the documents themselves, they mainly comprised correspondences, memorandums, and letters between various departments—especially the Department of Immigration and Manpower and the Department of External Affairs—as well as among important government officials, including ministers, deputy ministers, ambassadors, cabinet members, immigration officers, and even the prime minister himself. Many of the documents were confidential and classified, which provided a window into the uncensored thinking of many officials regarding the resettlement of Ugandan Asians. The language and logic they used unearthed a different framework for understanding why the Trudeau government decided to admit these refugees—their economic potential.
While I pored over the files, I looked for key words describing the economic potential of the refugees, including “assets,” “attractive,” “capable,” “determination,” “entrepreneur,” “high calibre,” “highly skilled, “professional,” “qualifications,” “business,” and “resources.” For each document containing such words, I photographed it, transcribed the content, and then filed it into my Evernote software, which is a useful device for organizing data according to themes. I had previously arranged my Evernote notebooks so that each one represented a desirable economic quality of the Ugandan refugees mentioned by Canadian officials. I also carefully noted and documented the times when Canadian officials did discuss the humanitarian intentions of their mission—that is, the alleviation of the suffering of the Ugandan Asians—but such a desire to help was always undermined by a subsequent discourse centring on the economic potential of those same refugees.
Before long, I had a large amount of data corresponding to each of the identified key words, and what emerged was a picture of the Trudeau government that was obsessed not only with the economic potential of these refugees but also with appearing to be humanitarian in their objectives to the outside world. They wanted the most-skilled refugees without appearing to. Indeed, the excavation of such economic thinking buried underneath the official humanitarian language helped me understand that the Trudeau government’s admittance of the Ugandan Asians had little to do with humanitarianism and more to do with how those refugees would benefit the Canadian state.
I also searched for different sources of motivation that encouraged the Trudeau government to accept the Ugandan Asian refugees, which also went beyond humanitarian desires, including Trudeau’s personal relationship with the Aga Khan as well as Canada’s desire to help the United Kingdom (UK). In sum, my discourse analysis reveals the extent to which the Trudeau government’s decision to help the refugees was driven by a wide range of self-interested motivations.
1.3.3 Research Question
Why did the Canadian government accept Ugandan Asians, and what does that reveal about the prevailing public and policy discourses around refugees in Canada at that time?
Chapter Two: Humanitarianism in Question
2.1 What Is Humanitarianism?
This chapter argues that the Trudeau government’s response to the Ugandan Asian exodus was driven by both economic as well as foreign policy factors—not humanitarian ones. To understand how Canadian officials co-opted a humanitarian discourse vis-à-vis the Ugandan refugees, this chapter presents a brief overview of how humanitarian language evolved from a desire to alleviate suffering to a tool used by states to meet certain aims. The political scientists Barnett and Weiss have argued that whereas humanitarianism once referred to the impartial provision of relief to victims of natural or human-made disasters, today, the altruistic and impartial language of humanitarianism often masks more economic and political motivations.[59] They have shown how states have used the services of humanitarian organizations, particularly the UNHCR, to meet certain aims. Barnett’s work has particularly revealed how the UNHCR, though ostensibly a humanitarian organization working on the behalf of the displaced, has become more beholden to states and their interests because of the organization’s financial dependence on them.[60] Throughout UNHCR’s history—whether in its preference for repatriation or its introduction of such Orwellian notions as “voluntariness” of return—the organization has acquiesced to state demands, which has further eroded the rights of the displaced and silenced their voices.[61] Chimni has also forcefully attacked so-called humanitarian interventions that aim to contain asylum seekers in their country of origin while implementing massive policies—often neoliberal ones—to reform the Global South in the West’s image; for Chimni, humanitarianism has a decidedly colonial logic.[62]
Humanitarian discourses remain powerful tools to elicit human compassion amid a disaster. Yet because such discourses are often used during catastrophes, the moral and humanistic sentiments they evoke often have the effect of silencing or erasing the larger historical trajectory or the socioeconomic reality that contextualizes the disaster. For all of their obvious political undertones, humanitarian discourses desperately try to sound apolitical. After all, no political position has a monopoly on the desire to help the victims of an earthquake or a tsunami. Yet as Fassin elaborates in his history of humanitarian thought, humanitarian interventions are more notable for what they do not do than for what they do.[63] He cites the example of the 2010 Haitian earthquake that decimated the island and triggered the outpouring of humanitarian efforts from around the world. Fassin does not deny that such help and charity were triggered by goodwill, yet in that moment of human solidarity, the individuals, organizations, and governments fighting to save Haiti could also forget other less convenient realities:
We could forget that only 6% of Haitian asylum seekers are granted the status of refugee in France, representing one of the lowest national rates, far behind those coming from apparently peaceful countries, or that thirty thousand Haitians were on the deportation lists of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. The cataclysm seemed to erase the memories of the French and subsequent American exploitation of the island. Our response to it signified the promise of reparation and the hope for reconciliation.[64]
Through appealing to the suffering of fellow beings, humanitarian discourses, as Fassin shows, enables a forgetting of larger socioeconomic realties. The language of suffering, as well as its concomitant images of grief and misery, facilitates an active depoliticization, in which the desire to help becomes cleansed of its less laudatory intentions. States tend to emphasize the moral sentiments embedded in the humanitarian discourse to hide their less noble pursuits, and such a strategy is particularly common concerning the decision to accept and resettle refugees—a strategy that the Trudeau government employed in its decision to resettle the Ugandan Asians, as the following sections show.
By emphasizing the humanitarian objectives of its Ugandan mission, the Trudeau government could mask its resettling of Uganda’s middle-class professionals—and ultimately benefitting from Amin’s expulsion order. Long before the 1972 order, Canadian immigration officers knew of the skills and resources of the South Asian community in East Africa and their desire to leave the region. These officers were well aware that the South Asians in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania were increasingly threatened by those countries’ Africanization programs, which sought to undo the inequalities that colonialism had bestowed upon those newly created countries. Thus, when Amin did announce his order, Canadian officials quickly advised Trudeau and his cabinet about the economic potential of the Ugandan Asian refugees. And what followed was a well-organized transfer of human capital from an undeveloped country to a developed one under the guise of humanitarianism.
2.2 Canada in East Africa before Amin’s Expulsion Order
The Department Manpower and Immigration knew of the economic potential of the East African Asian community well before Amin’s expulsion order on August 5, 1972. Memos and correspondences between staff members reveal the extent to which overseas immigrations officers anticipated that the Africanization programs unleashed by Obote, Nyerere, and Kenyatta would cause problems for the South Asian community and could incite them to immigrate to Canada. As early as 1968, E. Ziegler, chief of the Immigration and Foreign Manpower Section, reported that in Uganda, many “Indians again want to leave the country due to Africanization” … [and] see no future in the country.”[65] Two years later, in 1970, the visa office in Beirut—the closest embassy that handled immigration applications from East Africa at the time—noted that Obote’s Africanization programs resulted “in a steady interest on the part of Asians and other non-nation[als] in the country in immigration to Canada, Great Britain, and Australia.”[66]
As a result of this increased interest among South Asians in East Africa to immigrate to Canada, between 1970 and the summer of 1972, Canadian immigration officers from the embassy in Beirut undertook several research trips to Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda to investigate the calibre and skillset of the South Asian community in each country. In January 1972, Keith Carter, an immigration offer with extensive experience selecting immigrants from East Africa, in a memo to Manpower and Immigration, spoke in glowing terms of the quality of the South Asians applying to immigrate to Canada:
Many have visited Canada during the last eight months and are well aware of Canadian conditions. They are shrewd, solid businessmen who will make few, if any, mistakes in settling in Canada … In each case, evidence of a minimum of 30,000 [dollars] was requested and shown. Indeed, almost all of these businessmen have assets from 30,000 up to exceeding 100,000 deposited in Swiss, German, and British banks. It is a measure of their business acumen that while they invested heavily in East Africa, they managed to keep significant funds outside of the area as “insurance” against the possibility which is now becoming a reality. In summation, it can be safely said that the combination of their well-developed entrepreneurial skills and their financial assets cannot but prove to be a considerable gain for Canada.[67]
From January 26 to February 15 1972, Canadian immigration officers took a research to East Africa and interviewed “mostly Asians of a fairly high calibre.” In Kenya, they noted the great desire of many Asians to immigrate to Canada as they did in Uganda as well.[68]
Intrigued by such findings, Carter took yet another research trip to East Africa between March 4 and March 24 to explore the state of the South Asian community as well as their intentions.[69] Concerning Tanzania, Carter wrote that he had heard rumours that the Nyerere government planned on prohibiting the immigration of certain well-trained personnel deemed essential to the country’s functioning. The proposal created a sense of panic within the South Asian community, whose members occupied many of the country’s most skilled professions and who surmised the government would forbid them from leaving.[70] As a result, the desire to leave the country increased considerably, with the South Asian community looking more and more to Canada as a possible destination.
Beyond the diversity of the potential applicants from Tanzania, Carter stressed the economic potential of the group as a whole:
The bulk of the applicants were entrepreneurs with capital in excess of $30,000 outside the country. As a group they tend to be solid, small or medium businessmen from a wide variety of enterprises. All of them are flexible enough to go into other fields of endeavour should their original business ventures prove to be impractical in a Canadian setting … The representative of the Department of Industry, Trade, and Commerce who covers Tanzania from Nairobi is very favourably impressed with the entrepreneurial skills of these people. There is no doubt that the vast majority of these businessmen will find success in Canada, and with their success create, either directly or indirectly, a significant number of jobs in their areas of settlement.[71]
To give further evidence of their business acumen, Carter went on to cite two examples of Tanzania immigrants who arrived to Vancouver only seven months previously; one had already bought two restaurants and a motel, whereas the other was already managing a Toyota dealership in the Fraser Valley.[72]
Carter understood the economic potential of the South Asian community so much that he requested that the Department of Manpower and Immigration establish visa facilities at the embassy in Dar es Salam to process applications more quickly and efficiently and to limit the number of immigrants applying for landed immigration status upon their arrival to Canada as visitors[73]—a practice that was still allowed in 1971.
Although Carter did not visit Uganda on this trip and had few things to say about the South Asian community in Kenya—other than they did not face the pressures as those in Tanzania—Canadian immigration officials understood the South Asian community in all three countries in a similar fashion: they were all highly skilled, and their future in Africa was tenuous at best. Indeed, officials often spoke about the community as one group:
The “Asian” or non-African element in East Africa virtually dominates all levels of business enterprise.… This is particularly true at the wholesale-retail level of operations throughout Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. It is this dominance which has led to the hostility of the African population towards all “Asians,” and which has led to the present difficulties of this relatively small but obviously prosperous community.[74]
On the eve of Amin’s expulsion order, therefore, the Canadian government had extensive and well-placed information about the skills, capital, and entrepreneurship of the South Asian community in East Africa. They were well aware of their economic potential. Immigration officers, as a result, wanted better mechanisms in place to facilitate the transfer of skilled immigrants from East Africa to Canada. If the situation became unbearable for the South Asian community in Tanzania, Kenya, or Uganda, Canadian immigration officers wanted to be ready.
2.3 “Skimming the Cream”
In the days following Amin’s expulsion order, cabinet members and immigration officials debated how they would respond to the South Asian exodus from Uganda. They adopted a wait-and-see approach; they were not convinced that Amin would follow through on his order, nor were they sure how the British would react in terms of the number of Ugandan Asians they might resettle. They did, however, agree on one issue: the Ugandan Asians were not refugees. In fact, Canadian officials preferred to call them “expellees” or “stateless” because they had not crossed an international boundary and, thus, were not refugees as defined by the 1951 Refugee Convention. And although their reasoning was sound, their motivation for making such a distinction stemmed from an overtly pragmatic and self-interested position: calling Ugandan Asians refugees would set a dangerous precedent. James Cross, the acting assistant deputy minister for the Department of Manpower and Immigration, cautioned against using the term: “[If we treat] these persons as refugees, we may place ourselves in a position of having to react similarly in every country where government wants to get rid of unpopular minorities by forcing them to migrate.”[75] Similarly, in an August 8 meeting between representatives of the Department of Manpower and Immigration as well as the Canadian International Development Agency, they also decided against according the Ugandan Asians the status of refugees because “any announcement of [an] intention to take special measures would precipitate a flood of applications and create a dangerous precedent for analogue minority groups in other countries.” [76] Thus, only days after Amin had announced his threat to expel tens of thousands of Ugandan Asians, the Trudeau government had already decided to label these individuals “expellees”—not because the term was more accurate but because it provided a convenient rationale for committing fewer resources to help in a potential resettlement scheme and worked against setting a dangerous precedent in terms of who could or could not be labelled as refugees. State aims, as well as budgetary concerns—not humanitarian principles—defined the Canadian response from the beginning of the crisis.
The early memos circulating across different Canadian departments and agencies did, however, note a willingness to accept some of the Ugandan Asians who could meet normal immigration criteria because of the great contribution they could make to the Canadian economy. On August 14, 1972, a mere ten days before Trudeau would announce his government’s decision to resettle 3,000 Ugandan Asians, the Canadian East African Department sent a report detailing the education, economic, and professional profile of Ugandan Asians to Canadian Manpower and Immigration authorities. The Department thought the report would be of “interest to [these] authorities,” since they were discussing the “question of Ugandan entry into Canada.”[77] The report confirmed the importance of the South Asian community to the Ugandan economy as well as their notable skills and education level.
Although the report relied on data from surveys carried out between two and six years previously, the information cited still provided an intriguing snapshot of the position of the South Asian community in Ugandan society. In terms of education, the reported noted that the level was fairly high, particularly among the younger Ugandan Asians; in 1967, survey data showed that 25,000 Asians were enrolled in primary and secondary school, with nearly 800 Ugandan Asian students studying abroad, 400 of those at degree level.[78] In terms of occupation and skill level, the report classified one-third of the Ugandan Asian labour as “high level manpower,” as they occupied important positions in such fields as junior management, professional (including doctors and teachers), technical, artisans, and skilled office workers.[79] The survey also noted that the Ugandan Asians’ occupational importance was reflected in their high wages: “In 1970, the average wage of [those] employed in the larger establishments of the private sector was EA [East African shilling] 925 and the average wage of the 960 male employees in public services was EA1093. The comparable figures for African employees were EA153 and EA199 respectively.”[80] In 1970, Ugandan Asians occupied 60 percent of the highest paid positions. The reports also described in the detail the high-level skills of the Ugandan Asians as well as their contribution to the country’s economy:
It appears that Asians provided approximately the following proportion of high level skills: 14% of top management; 12% of junior management; 27% of professional (including 34% of architecture, civil, electrical, and mechanical engineers; 37% of doctors; 40% of accountants); 13% of technical personnel (including 19% of engineering technicians); 20% of artisans (including 34% of fitters, 25% foeman); [and] 15% of skilled office workers (including 32% of personnel secretaries, 28% of bookkeepers).[81]
In 1971, moreover, the report said that 79 percent of pharmacists, 70 percent of the doctors, and 69 percent of dentists were Ugandan Asian.[82] Thus, the reported painted a comprehensive and flattering picture of the South Asian community’s position in Uganda. They were educated, skilled, and had a plethora of experience in many different areas. They dominated their respective fields and were a professional class par excellence.
Such encouraging statistics surely influenced Cabinet’s decision on August 24 to approve special immigrations measures to resettle some 3,000 people from Uganda, with preference given to those who could “meet normal Canadian immigration requirements and would not require special assistance to become established in Canada.”[83] The cabinet convened in Ottawa on August 24 and decided upon the following:
The cabinet agreed that
a) Canada accept as a basic objective the resettlement of up to 3000 of the Ugandan expellees.
b) an interviewing team be dispatched to Kampala as soon as necessary arrangements can be made;
c) the team at first process with all possible speed up to 3000 applications who can meet normal requirements [i.e., the points system] and do not need special assistance;
d) if the number of applicants accepted as in (c), falls short of 3000, the minister of manpower and immigration has authority to invoke “the oppressed minorities” policy by:
(i) making arrangement for such special transportation and reception services as may be required, and
(ii) allowing the admission of otherwise unqualified applicants, deemed capable of successful establishment with such special assistance, until the total of 3000 is reached.[84]
To select these 3,000 refugees, Canadian immigration officials in Kampala used the points system. Established in 1967, the points system was a mechanism by which immigration officers could select the best candidates with the most impressive human capital profiles for immigration to Canada in an objective and nondiscriminatory way. At the time, independent applicants had to score 50 points out of a possible 90 to become a landed immigrant. The points were spread over eight categories: 1) education and training (a maximum of 20 points awarded for years of formal education completed and/or professional work experience); 2) occupation demand (a maximum of 15 points awarded for possessing skills of which the Canadian economy needs; 3) personal assessment (a maximum of 15 points awarded for the applicant’s perceived adaptability to Canadian life as well as their motivation and initiative); 4) occupation skills (a maximum of 10 points awarded for possessing specific skills related to a specific trade, e.g., a plumber or an electrician); 5) age (a maximum of 10 points awarded relative to whether the applicant is under 35 years old or over); 6) knowledge of English and French (a maximum of 10 points awarded for speaking either of the languages; 7) relatives (a maximum of five points awarded if the applicant has relatives in Canada; and 8) employment opportunities (a maximum of five points awarded for applicants applying for work in areas in which there is a demand for labour).[85]
From these criteria, the immigration team in Kampala sorted the Ugandan Asians across three types of visas: A, those who meet the selection criteria (eight categories); B, those who did not meet the selection criteria but had a reasonable prospect of successfully establishing themselves in Canada because of friends and relative (four categories); and C, those who did not meet the selection criteria and had little prospect of successfully establishing themselves but who would, nevertheless, be admitted on humanitarian grounds (two categories).[86]
The Canadian team in Kampala, however, prioritized those applicants who met the selection criteria and would add value and skills to the Canadian economy. The Trudeau government was clear in its stipulation that it wished to spend as little money as possible to successfully resettle and integrate those refugees in Canadian society and would only entertain the idea of admitting ineligible applicants under the oppressed minorities clause if the initial 3,000 number had not been reached. In 1970, the cabinet had introduced the clause, which stated that under extreme circumstances “examining officers have discretion to admit such (members of oppressed minorities) when the information available indicates that there is sufficient private and/or government assistance available to ensure the applicants’ successful establishment in Canada.”[87] Thus, the Trudeau government was prepared to evoke the clause in the case of the Ugandan Asians but only if the Kampala team could not find 3,000 people who met the criteria established by the points system.
Early reports from the Kampala team, however, indicated that 3,000 applicants would meet normal immigration criteria by the end of September. Since none of those applicants required special assistance, Canada’s flaunted humanitarian intentions had become suspect among many. When Joseph Godber, the British minister of state for Foreign Affairs, for example, travelled to Sao Paulo to celebrate Brazil’s 150th anniversary of independence, he asked Maro Gibson, his Brazilian counterpart, whether he could expect the country to resettle some of the Ugandan Asian. His response was deafening silence. After the story was leaked to Veja, Brazil’s leading news magazine, the editors quipped that Brazil was not in a position to take any of the Asians because Canada had already siphoned the best ones and “only illiterates remained.”[88] Similarly, Roger St. Vincent—who led the Canadian mission to Kampala to resettle Ugandan Asian refugees between August 30 and November 8 and who wrote a memoir based on his experiences—remarked that the British, too, thought Canada had selected the best refugees:
After closing the office, I saw Kevin Croakham, the Chief Immigration Officer for the British team. Not a single Asian showed up at his office this day while our queues stretched around [our building]. He was sending some of his Immigration Officers back to the UK…. The situation on the ground in Kampala was now reversed. We were extremely busy while the British team had nothing to do. Kevin Croakham laconically remarked “we have been ready to fold up for some time. You Canadians took the cream.”[89]
The Trudeau government itself worried about the international community only perceiving its mission in Uganda in self-interested terms. In a mid-September memo to the cabinet, Bryce Mackasey, minister of the Department of Manpower and Immigration, stressed the importance of continuing to underscore the humanitarian objectives of Canada’s mission:
Public attention has already been drawn by the British and Canadian press to the possibility of Canada’s “skimming the cream” off the total Ugandan movement, leaving the harder-to-resettle cases to be absorbed by other countries. The prime minister has reassured the British High-Commissioner that this is definitely not Canada’s intention. In addition, our High Commissioner in Nairobi has warned that any apparent effort to take only the best candidates could well irritate President Amin, with unpredictable but unpleasant consequences.[90]
Mackasey was concerned with Canada’s image abroad as well as its international prestige. To limit increasing the government’s commitment to the Ugandan Asians while reconfirming its humanitarian objectives, Mackasey proposed to lift the numerical limit for qualified applicants and accept a number of applicants who did not meet normal immigration requirements and would need special assistance to be resettled in Canada. Such an alternative, Mackasey reasoned, was the most “desirable course of action from the point of view of humanitarian and international prestige.” [91] The minister was quick to point out, however, that if the government decided to remove the numerical limitations for qualified applicants, who still might require some financial assistance to resettle in Canada, the number of humanitarian cases to be admitted could be substantially reduced. In this way, Mackasey concluded, Canada could accept more skilled Ugandan Asians, resettle some humanitarian cases, and “derive full benefit on the international scene,” which Mackasey did not fail to remind his readers was “one of the original objectives” of the entire mission.[92] Thus, on September 13, the cabinet decided to remove the numerical limit on qualified applicants and approve the admission of a “maximum of 1,000 applicants who do not meet normal requirements but are deemed likely to become successfully established in Canada with special assistance to be provided by the Department of Manpower and Immigration.”[93]
Mackasey’s proposal, and the Trudeau government’s subsequent decision to admit 1,000 humanitarian cases, stemmed not from a desire to alleviate the suffering of those who did not possess the requisite skills to enter Canada but a need to save face in the eyes of the international community, who had lauded the government’s initial decision to resettle 3,000 Ugandan Asians. The minister’s plan ensured that Canada would continue to receive a steady stream of skilled refugees at a minimum of cost while paying lip service to the country’s ostensible humanitarian goals by accepting a handful of humanitarian cases.
2.4 Rejections and Cultural Racism
Past research on Canada’s role in the Ugandan exodus pays little attention to the number of applicants the Kampala team rejected during its operation. For example, by October 10, the Kampala team had received 7,710 cases, or 19, 285 persons.[94] After what St. Vincent termed a “culling,” however, the team only issued 2,063 visas—4,024 cases, or 10,060 persons, were refused after screening their paper applications, and then 286 cases, or 877 persons, were rejected after their interviews.[95] According to St. Vincent’s own figures, during the entire operation, 23, 392 persons applied for resettlement in Canada, and only 6,175 were accepted.[96] The exact reasoning why Kampala officials rejected so many applicants was not made specifically clear in the documents, although St. Vincent did mention that “British passport holders, citizens of India, Ugandans, and others who claim to be stateless” were not accepted for interviews.[97] Why St. Vincent doubted the truthfulness of some stateless claims remains a mystery, especially since towards the end of the evacuation period, government officials told officers in Kampala to prioritize stateless claims.
Given that the Trudeau cabinet agreed to resettle more skilled Ugandan Asians, it seems clear that many of them were rejected because they did not meet the Canadian immigration criteria established under the points system, and, as a result, their future was cast in limbo. Indeed, during the two weeks before the deadline, the ICEM office in Kampala issued 2,950 travel documents to Ugandan Asians not resettled by any country, and by November 9, 3,362 persons had been flown out of Uganda on ICEM flights to Europe, which meant several hundred Ugandan Asians were still left unaccounted for.[98] Once the refugees arrived in Europe, the UNHCR placed them in transit centres and became responsible for finding them new homes; over the next year, a host of countries agreed to resettle some of them, including Austria, Belgium, Norway, the Netherlands, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Canada.[99]
Beyond further casting Canada’s humanitarian intentions in doubt, such rejections highlight the ways in which Canadian immigration policies continued to exclude large numbers of people, albeit in different ways. The Ugandan episode is often considered a foundational moment in Canadian immigration history, as it was the first time the Canadian government admitted a large number of nonwhite and non-Christian migrants; it represented a clean break with the country’s discriminatory past. Yet what took on a greater salience in immigration decision making—as well as decisions concerning which Uganda Asian refugees to admit—was what these migrants could offer Canada in terms of their abilities and skills, a notion still laced with ideas about race and civilization. Indeed, racism did not simply disappear in Canada with the passing of nondiscriminatory legislation; it evolved to become associated with cultural values.
The French philosopher Étienne Balibar has explored how the introduction of nondiscriminatory immigration criteria also, paradoxically, promoted a nascent cultural racism based not on the idea of superior or inferior races in terms of biology but superior or inferior groups based on cultural attributes.[100] Balibar shows how cultural discourses slot different communities in different places within a hierarchy of cultural superiority: “the cultures supposed implicitly superior are those which appreciate and promote ‘individual’ enterprise, social and political individualism, as against those which inhibit these things. These are said to be the cultures whose ‘spirit of community’ is constituted by individualism.”[101]
The Canadian points system reflected these individualistic values and worked to exclude those persons who came from communities who did not share such liberal principles. In the case of the Ugandan Asians, their religious and ethnic differences were of little concern to Canadian policymakers not because of some underlying cosmopolitan or multicultural ethos but because they still shared values fundamental to the Canadian state—those related to capitalism, modernity, and Western civilization. Exclusionary policies could no longer be as racially explicit as they had been in the past; now, racism’s presence was found in the discourses that the state “must protect itself from those do not share its values, ideas that the state must protect itself from those who do not share its values, ideals of beauty, and middle-class virtues.”[102] Culture became the new method by the Canadian state to exclude those who did not possess Western liberal values.
This paper has not the space to further trace this evolution of discourses of exclusion as pertaining to Canadian immigration policies. Suffice to say, the Ugandan episode represented an important moment in the transformation of the exclusionary tendencies of Canadian immigration policies—metamorphosing from ones based on a racism defined by supposed biological differences to a racism defined by inferior and superior cultural attributes. Despite having a nondiscriminatory immigration policy, Canada only accepted 26 percent of those Ugandan Asians who applied for resettlement—only those who were deemed culturally fit to integrate into Canadian life.
*
This chapter has shown that far from demonstrating a humanitarian desire to alleviate suffering, the Canadian mission to resettle those Ugandan Asians expelled by Amin represented nothing more than a direct transfer of skilled professionals from a poorer country to a richer one. Canadian officials and policymakers knew about the economic potential of the South Asian community in East Africa long before Amin’s expulsion order and took care to only select those refugees who would add to Canadian society in terms of their capital, skills, and business acumen. Only when Canadian officials faced criticism from other countries about their supposed humanitarian intentions did the Trudeau cabinet decide to settle a handful of humanitarian cases. Canada’s decision to resettle the Ugandan Asians sprung primarily from economic motivations—not humanitarian ones. Yet as the next chapter reveals, the personal friendship between Prime Minister Trudeau and the Aga Khan also led Canadian officials to intercede on behalf of those expelled.
Chapter Three: The Prince and the Prime Minister
This chapter argues that the personal relationship between Prime Minister Trudeau and the Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of Ismaili Muslims, played an important part in Canada’s decision to resettle the Ugandan refugees. Of the approximately 6,000 Ugandan Asians arriving to Canada, over 50 percent were Ismailis.[103] As the crisis in Uganda unfolded, the Aga Khan directly asked Trudeau to resettle a significant number of Ismailis. In their correspondences, the Aga Khan highlighted the ability of his followers to integrate seamlessly and contribute greatly to whichever societies they found themselves. He also made financial commitments to aid in their resettlement to Canada. As a result, the Canadian team in Kampala prioritized Ismaili applications, much to the detriment of others who could not claim Ismaili membership or who could not claim to provide any benefits to the Canadian state. Such findings indicate how relationships between leaders can often influence how and which refugees are resettled and can matter much more than commitments to humanitarian principles.
3.1 Who Is the Aga Khan?
His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan is the spiritual leader of the Shia Ismaili Muslim community, who in 1957 at the age of 20 became the forty-ninth imam of the group—a lineage traced directly to the Prophet Muhammad. Numbering about 15 million in total and living in over 25 countries, the Ismailis are scattered across the world.[104] Large numbers reside in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Central Asia, and throughout Africa; around 80,000 Ismailis call Canada home.[105]
The Aga Khan is best known for his philanthropic work as well as his considerable wealth; as of 2008, he was worth an estimated one billion dollars. In 1967, he created the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF), a private, nonprofit international development agency that aims to eradicate poverty in the Global South.[106] The Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), of which the AKF is a part, comprises a plethora of different agencies that not only tackle different development issues but also promote cross-cultural understanding, particularly between Islam and the Western world.
The Canadian government has supported AKDN projects for over thirty-five years, beginning with its financial contributions to the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme in Northern Pakistan, which was launched in 1982. The Aga Khan himself was made an honorary Canadian citizen in 2010—the same year the Aga Khan Museum opened in Toronto. He opened his Global Centre for Pluralism in Ottawa in 2017 and designated the same city to be the site for the Delegation of the Ismaili Imamat, which has represented the successions of imams since the time of the Prophet. Indeed, the Aga Khan has strong ties with Canada that stretch back to the 1950s, when he met Pierre Eliot Trudeau at Harvard University, where both studied.[107] The friendship served the Aga Khan well, especially in the fall of 1972 when he asked to Trudeau to favour resettling Ismailis in Canada from all those Ugandan Asians expelled from the country. And Trudeau interceded on his friend’s behalf and directed his officials in Kampala to prioritize granting visas to Ismaili refugees, even though such favouritism went against the 1967 immigration regulations, which enshrined the principles of objectivity and universality into migrant selection. For his friend, Trudeau ignored such stipulations and actively supported the resettlement of the Ismailis—a talented group of professionals under the leadership of an incredibly wealthy and well-respected man—over those individuals who did not possess such impressive resumes or imposing benefactors.
3.2 The Aga Khan’s Appeal to Prime Minister Trudeau
On August 25, 1972, the Aga Khan sent an urgent memo to the Canadian High Commission in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, in which he expressed great concern over Amin’s threat of expelling even those South Asians with Ugandan citizenship.[108] Such a threat was particularly alarming for the Aga Khan, since about two-thirds of the Ismaili community in Uganda were Ugandan citizens and had denied to opt for UK citizenship upon the country’s independence in 1962. He feared that the Ugandan authorities would invent some pretext to revoke their Ugandan citizenship or would deny that it had every existed, leaving the group effectively stateless.[109] The Aga Khan appealed to Canada’s humane immigration policies yet also extolled the economic resilience of the Ismaili community: “I think his excellency CDN HighCom in Nairobi will confirm that the Ismaili community in East Africa is of a relatively high level economically and is well structured and that as a result it does have means to ensure from within that when it emigrates to CDA or elsewhere it can soon stand on its own feet.”[110]
He concluded his memo by requesting a meeting with Prime Minister Trudeau, any time after September 15, where he could discuss possible plans regarding Ismaili resettlement in Canada. The prince was optimistic about securing the prime minister’s favour, since he had previously raised the precarious position of the Ismailis in East Africa with Trudeau at the Aga Khan’s private resort at Costa Smeralda, Sardinia, and the prime minister had responded with concern and understanding. The Aga Khan, though, wished discretion in the matter because he worried about the potential public relations fallout if it came to light that the Canadian government had prioritized the Ismaili community over other Ugandan Asians.[111]
September 28 was chosen as the date of the meeting in Ottawa. In the interim, however, Canadian officials did their due diligence in ascertaining how Canada could benefit from the skills and resources of the Ismaili community in Uganda. Officers at the Department of Manpower and Immigration prepared a confidential and detailed report outlining who exactly the Ismailis were, their structure, characteristics, and attributes, as well as their previous experiences of immigrating and settling in Canada.[112] The report lauded the well-organized and tightly-knitted social structure of the Ismaili community. Under the guidance of the Aga Khan, local leaders collected tithes from Ismailis that went towards funding a plethora of community projects benefiting the entire community. The Aga Khan placed a great deal of emphasis on education as well as financial security, values that were also evident among the Ismailis in Uganda:
The Ismailis’ efforts in developing financial institutions such as banks, insurance companies, industrial development corporations and tourism development operations indicate that the traditional emphasis on the social welfare of the community is pursued at a highly secular level. There is a great of stress on education and, as a result, schools and medical institutions have also been encouraged and many East African Ismailis have been educated in the United Kingdom.[113]
As a result of this emphasis on education and social welfare, the Ismailis dominated many of the professional positions in Uganda, along with other Ugandan Asians.
Moreover, the report praised the Aga Khan’s ability to integrate “religious beliefs within a stable … social structure [which] has provided a firm basis for Ismaili adaptation to modern innovations.”[114] In other words, the Ismailis were neither archaic nor antiquated in their religious outlook; in fact, their beliefs were surprisingly forwards looking and modern, which according to the author, allowed them “a remarkable ability to adapt to different situations and conditions.”[115] No matter where in the world Ismailis lived, the Aga Khan instructed them to become citizens and follow the customs of the local population. For the Ismailis who lived in Uganda under British colonialism, this meant learning English, organizing their families along English lines, and adopting English and European customs.[116] The report also noted that the Ismailis who had emigrated from Tanzania in the late 1960s had faced few difficulties integrating into Canadian life. Because of the Ugandan Ismailis’ professional skillset, their secular and modern sensibilities, and their English cultural values, the report, therefore, enthusiastically endorsed the group’s resettlement in Canada:
It appears on the surface that prospects for a successful resettlement in Canada are favourable. The danger of a wide psycho-cultural gap, while perhaps a problem in the beginning, is likely to be overcome by the Ismailis demonstrated capacity for “psychic mobility.” The stability and the financial resources of the International Ismaili organization should also work to ensure a secure footing in Canada.[117]
Cross prepared another report examining in more detail how well previous Ismaili immigrants had settled in Canada. Since 1967 and the introduction of objective and nondiscriminatory immigration regulations, the Department of Immigration and Manpower no longer asked about the religion of any applicant; as a result, the office in Beirut could not provide firm statistics on the number of Ismailis who had immigrated to Canada. Nevertheless, Cross and his team dug a little deeper, and after a thorough investigation, they could piece together a rough snapshot of the Ismaili community in Canada—and it was praiseworthy. The authors painted a flattering picture of the Ismaili community’s position in Canadian society:
There is no indication that members of this group have experienced undue difficulties in establishing themselves in Canada…. A significant number of the group is entrepreneurs (e.g. shopkeepers, hoteliers) with substantial amounts of capital available and who have been able to get most of it to Canada…. Our officers who interviewed these people have reported on a number of occasions that they were relatively impressed by their quality.[118]
The report also noted that the community’s internal support structures as well as their transnational connections had enabled the Ismailis to not only successfully integrate but to create a stable and secure path for future Ismailis to join them in Canada. The financial support of the Aga Khan himself did not hurt either:
The community has, however, done much to assist itself in getting to Canada. During the recent exodus from Tanzania an Ismaili “Council” submitted to our office several lists of carefully chosen le,ading families, indicating a desire to get the community started off on the right foot. Both External and Manpower and Immigration officers operating in Tanzania reported rumours of a financial guarantee or special fund set up by the Aga Khan to assist resettlement and both viewed as credible.[119]
A Department of Manpower and Immigration office in Vancouver noted that approximately 800 Ismailis lived in lower mainland British Colombia, and they had mechanisms in place to facilitate the arrival and settlement of Ismaili immigrants. The community could arrange “for temporary housing and settlement of Ismaili Moslems underway as well as program[s] of orientation and indoctrination after arrival.” The office further highlighted that they had “no serious problems of adapting or fitting into jobs as most are either skilled or entrepreneurs.”[120]
Thus, on the eve of the meeting with the Aga Khan, the Department of Manpower and Immigration had detail knowledge about the Ismaili community both in Canada and Uganda. All of the relevant data presented the community in a favourable light and left little doubt about their potential economic contribution to Canadian society—both those who had already come to Canada and those still yet to.
3.3 The Meeting
On September 28, a meeting took place between the Aga Khan, his representative in East Africa, Sir Eboo Pirbhai, and Canadian officials from External Affairs and the Department of Manpower and Immigration. The prince pressed his case for the Canadian government to resettle the thousands of Ismailis rendered stateless through Amin’s order. He stressed the fact that although many Ismailis had become Ugandan citizens upon the country’s independence, the Amin government had destroyed or simply refused to recognize their documentation; as a result, the prince emphasized that once the November 8 deadline passed, these Ismailis would have nowhere to go.[121] The Aga Khan further argued that although these Ismailis were not refugees in the traditional sense (i.e., they had no crossed an international boundary), their statelessness made them de facto refugees, since the Amin government would not shield them from racial persecution, which was made manifest in his expulsion order.[122] The Canadian officials agreed that there was some validity in the prince’s argument, and Cross replied that even though the Ismailis were not de jure refuges, because of their impending statelessness, Canada’s flexible oppressed minorities clause could be applied in their favour, as it could be for other Ugandan Asians.[123]
The prince, however, felt that the situation of the Ismailis was more desperate than that of other Ugandan Asians, especially those who had citizenship from another country, and that their statelessness warranted special favour from the Canadian government.[124] He was careful, though, not to extend his wish too forcefully because he knew, and said as much, that if such favouritism were uncovered, both he and the Canadian government could find themselves in a deeply embarrassing situation. Without going into any specifics, the prince disclosed to the Canadian officials that he had organized similar operations in the past: a confidential list was passed to the government in question, and as people turned up, they were checked off.[125] This way, the Aga Khan said, “The matter doesn’t become public knowledge and priority cases can be discreetly identified.”[126] In the case of Uganda, he further stipulated that he would not tell Ugandan Ismailis about the plan so that he and Pirbhai could organize the operation in secret.
Throughout his proposal, the Aga Khan emphasized the capabilities and skills of the Ismaili community; he wanted to know from the government about areas and activities in Canada in which Ismailis could fulfil needs in terms of “professional, industrial and commercial requirements.”[127] He also believed that at least half of the stateless group would qualify for landed status in Canada under the points system; moreover, the Canadian government would not have to worry about any security or medical issues with the group either. He all spoke at length about the investment opportunities his vast development network could bring to Canada. And, finally, the prince said he would pay for their flights to Canada as well as provide support to help for their settlement and integration in the country.[128]
All in all, the Aga Khan had delivered an enticing and intriguing proposal. The meeting concluded with the Canadian officials offering some enthusiasm for the plan but advised the prince that any final decision had to be made by the cabinet and the prime minister himself.
3.4 The Canadian Response
Shortly after the meeting with the Aga Khan, Cross prepared a memo to Mackasey in which he proposed a way to accommodate the prince’s request without appearing to favour the Ismailis, which was a grave concern for him: “We could be criticized if we were to give priority in our processing to this particularly group over the other applicants who represent the Hindu, Sikh, Christian religions as well as other Moslem elements.”[129] To avoid such potential embarrassment, while ostensibly still favouring the Ismaili group, Cross recommended prioritizing the applicants who would become stateless because of Amin’s expulsion order. Although the humanitarian gesture embedded in such a proposal seems self-evident, Cross’s next sentence undercuts such an altruistic reading: “The [Kampala] team could also take into account the assistance to be made available by the AK [Aga Khan] in those cases where the point rating is not substantially below the 50 points required under the selection criteria.”[130] Thus, the Kampala team would still assess the stateless applicants based on the points—which would still tacitly favour the Ismailis because of their professional backgrounds—and would give substantial leeway to those Ismailis who did not meet the criteria because of the financial backing promised by the Aga Khan.[131] In two sentences, Cross’s proposal goes from recommending all stateless persons be prioritized to granting increased flexibility to Ismaili applicants due to the prince’s tremendous resources. Yet not all applicants would be Ismailis, and they would not be protected by a wealthy benefactor.
In any event, the proposal quickly won approval among Canadian officials. It seemed the perfect solution for granting priority to the Ismailis without appearing to do so. The Department of Manpower and Immigration rationalized their decision in humanitarian terms by repeatedly emphasizing the Ismailis were the hardest hit by Amin’s order—a disputable claim, since other Ugandan Asian groups had also been rendered stateless—yet department officials always tempered such noble language with references to both the Aga Khan’s substantial resources as well as the skills possessed by the Ismailis themselves: “The Aga Khan’s readiness to assist financially in Ismaili resettlement is another element which contributes to a positive determination of their ability to settle successfully in Canada. They are also on the whole a highly qualified group of people.”[132] The proposal was the ideal way for the Canadian government to promote their humanitarian intentions while resettling a group of people that required little in terms of assistance and had the support of an influential and powerful religious leader—the Aga Khan. Thus, it was agreed that the Aga Khan would not inform the Ugandan Ismaili community of the deal and Pirbhai would provide a confidential list of names to the High Commission office in Nairobi; meanwhile, the Department of Immigration and Manpower would instruct its officers in Kampala to prioritize all stateless applicants.
Yet Mackasey never specifically told St. Vincent in Kampala about the real purpose behind prioritizing stateless applications, which was, of course, to favour Ismaili applicants. As St. Vincent recalls in his memoir, he only received a call from Mackasey on October 2 to accept all Asians who would become stateless after the November 8 deadline without providing any further elaboration, which led to few curious episodes. On October 11, St. Vincent travelled to Nairobi to meet with V.M. Olivier from the Canadian High Commission to discuss the conclusion of the mission in a month’s time. Little did St. Vincent know, however, that he would also meet with Sir Eboo Pirbhai, who wanted assurances that the Ismailis in Ugandan would be accepted without limitations.[133] Pirbhai had heard from representatives in Kampala that the Canadian team would not interview all of the Ismailis, to which St. Vincent responded that he could not favour one group of Ugandan Asians over another. St. Vincent, however, did inform Pirbhai that over the next few weeks, 2,000 applicants (or approximately 5,000 persons) who were initially not accepted for an interview will be granted one—an indication that the Kampala team was receiving names from the High Commission in Nairobi—and the vast majority of these interviewees were Ismailis.[134] Such a revelation did not appease Pirbhai, who told St. Vincent that “all Ismailis are stateless”—implying that the interviews were unnecessary—and would refer the matter to “a higher authority,” a not so subtle reference to Prince Sadruddin, the High Commissioner of the UNHCR and the Aga Khan’s brother.[135]
On October 16, and back in Kampala, St. Vincent received word that he was to prioritize all stateless Asians, which as St. Vincent himself indicated would be a de facto prioritization of all Ismaili applicants and could cause the Canadian government some embarrassment if uncovered. His concern did not register among his superiors, as St. Vincent thought Pirbhai “had reached someone at the highest level.”[136] Towards the end of the mission, two Ismaili community leaders approached St. Vincent and handed him a cheque for one million Ugandan pounds to repay Canada for the generous treatment of the Ismaili people. St. Vincent explained to them that Canada would cover the expenses and tore the cheque in two; of course, St. Vincent did not know that Canadian policymakers did expect recompense for its favourable treatment of the Ismailis and they would ensure that the Aga Khan delivered on what he had promised.[137]
The Canadian government–Aga Khan stateless plan served the needs of both parties. The Trudeau government’s emphasis on stateless individuals allowed them not only to demonstrate their humanitarian intentions without implementing an overly relaxed selection criteria—which would have been the case if they had referred to the Ugandans as refugees—but also to resettle thousands of skilled Ismaili refugees who would need little in the way of financial support because of the assurances promised by the Aga Khan. For the Ismailis, they received special favour from the Trudeau government and were permitted to create a new homeland on Canadian soil. And although the Ismaili did face a precarious future in Uganda, it is doubtful whether their situation was any worse than any other Ugandan group, evidenced by the large number of non-Ismaili stateless persons who were left stranded after the November 8 deadline and who had to be transported to European transit centres to await further resettlement. Thus, Canada’s prioritization of the Ugandan Ismaili community originated not from a humanitarian desire to aid a stateless people but from a personal friendship between Trudeau and the Aga Khan as well as from the promises of the prince himself that the Ismailis were a professional and resourceful people who would have a great impact on the Canadian economy.
3.5 After the Exodus
Canadian favouritism of Ismaili refugees continued in the years following the 1972 exodus. In an exchange of letters between Trudeau and the Aga Khan in March and April 1974, the prime minister told his friend that the Canadian government would do its upmost to secure the safe passage of those Ismailis still in East Africa as well as elsewhere. On the Aga Khan’s behalf, the Trudeau government made enquiries about those Ugandan Asians, mainly Ismailis, in Kenya who had applied for entry to Canada. The UNHCH high commissioner informed Trudeau that the Kenyan government considered these individuals as persons “in transit,” but they were not presently under any great pressure to leave the country.[138] Trudeau, though, had instructed the Canadian immigration office in Nairobi to contact Pirbhai in Kenya to assure the Ismaili community that if the situation changed and the community found itself under sudden distress, they would be “given top processing priority by the Canadian authorities for immigration to Canada.”[139]
In the same letter, Trudeau also revealed that he had spoken with Premier Bourassa of Quebec with respect to the plight of the Ismaili community in Zaire (today’s Democratic Republic of the Congo), whose position there had become threatened due to the government’s recent implementation of Africanization policies. Trudeau suggested to the premier that the Ismailis would be attractive candidates for residence in Quebec because of their skills as well as their ability to speak French.[140] The premier had been quite receptive to the idea, and Trudeau encouraged the Aga Khan to meet with Bourassa when he would be in Paris on official business.
As with the Ismailis of East Africa, Trudeau had been well briefed about the economic potential of those Ismailis residing in Zaire. In the spring of 1974, an officer from the Department of Immigration and Manpower travelled to Kinshasa to deal with a surge of immigrations applications from Ismaili residents there. After interviewing and processing their applications, the officer lauded both the capital and resources of these people: “Of the total number interviewed and provisionally accepted thus far, 236 applicants are entrepreneurs with combined capital of 12, 476, 200 dollars, of which 6,031,300 would be destined for investment in the Province of Quebec.”[141] The officer further praised the group’s work ethic and their determination to succeed:
The quality of the candidates interviewed in Kinshasa was considered to be exceptional and special emphasis has been placed on their will and determination to attain success. Many had lost everything they owned in 1964, 1966, or 1967, and they have already demonstrated their ability to become successfully established after a fresh start. Our officer expressed his opinion that the hard work and the qualities they have demonstrated will be a valuable contribution to their success in Canada.[142]
It is of little surprise, then, that Trudeau concluded his letter with the following refrain: “There is every likelihood that these persons in Zaire who have applied to come to Canada … can be processed and moved in the very near future. It is our intention to do so with a minimum of publicity.”[143]
In a letter to Trudeau dated April 16, 1974, the Aga Khan expressed his most sincerest thanks for the understanding attitude of Canadian authorities regarding the situation of Ismailis in Zaire, and as a result, the problems there had largely been solved. He also thanked the prime minister for suggesting a meeting with Premier Bourassa, an invitation he would surely accept. And, finally, the prince wished to thank the prime minister prioritizing the applications of Ismailis in Kenya should the situation for them deteriorate—a likely scenario given that the prince’s contacts assured him that the Kenyan government regarded those Ismailis as only “in transit” and that they would eventually have to leave.[144]
In the end, therefore, the Aga Khan had secured further resettlement for his people, and Canada had acquired a further injection of economic talent. Indeed, the entire Trudeau–Aga Khan episode should be read as an arrangement that mutually benefited both parties. The Aga Khan used his friendship with Trudeau as well as his vast influence and fortune to persuade the prime minister to grant favour in the resettlement to Canada of the Ismaili group. Trudeau, meanwhile, could promote Canada’s humanitarian spirit globally without having to admit that the government had prioritized Ismaili applicants, and, more importantly, that Canada received thousands of resource-rich refugees with the backing of one of the world’s wealthiest men. As with the non-Ismaili Ugandan Asians whom the Kampala team had selected before the decision to prioritize the Ismailis, the Trudeau government’s decision to help was not based on humanitarianism, or a genuine desire to alleviate the suffering of others, but on a rational and well-researched decision to resettle a group of skilled refugees that would ultimately help Canada more than the country had helped them. Canada chose which humanitarian crises to intervene in based on a self-interested calculus—what could benefit them the most—not on a desire to help.
Chapter Four: Conclusion
In the post-WWII world, various organizations have praised Canada for its treatment of refugees and for prioritizing humanitarian objectives over more selfish state needs. The 1972 Ugandan episode—in which the Trudeau government agreed to resettle over 6,000 Ugandan Asians in Canada—has also largely been remembered as another example of Canadian benevolence towards the plight of refugees. Yet this paper has shown through a close reading of the discourses circulating among Canadian immigration officers, diplomats, cabinet members, and even the prime minister himself that the Trudeau government decided to intervene in the Ugandan crisis because it ultimately benefited the Canadian state. Despite Trudeau’s rhetoric on the campaign trail that Canada had a humanitarian obligation to help the Ugandan Asians and that such a noble gesture would follow in the country’s proud humanitarian tradition, the decision to resettle was self-serving. Canadian immigration officers had known the calibre of the South Asian community in East Africa, as well as their economic potential, long before Amin’s expulsion order; they understood that the Africanization programs implemented by East African governments—in a genuine attempt to rectify some of the injustices of colonialism—would jeopardize that community’s standing in those countries and that they would want to immigrate to a friendlier country. And when Amin finally did order the Ugandan Asians expelled, the Trudeau government dispatched a team of immigration officers to Kampala armed with the points system—a mechanism through which Canada ensured they only admitted the best immigrants to the country—to select only those from which the Canadian state could benefit. The personal relationship between Trudeau and the Aga Khan also cast further doubt on the humanitarian intentions of the Canadian response to Amin’s expulsion order, since the prince had advised Canadian officials that the Ismailis resettled to Canada would have significant resources and skills at their disposable as well as the financial support of the prince himself.
The Ugandan episode has also largely been seen as a paradigm shift in how Canada reacted to large-scale refugee situations—it was the first time Canada resettled a large group of nonwhite refugees. As a result, the event has come to represent an important step on Canada’s march toward increasingly liberal and race-neutral immigration regulations, in which the objective talents of the candidate, not their racial background, were used to measure their potential to immigrate to Canada. Yet the implementation of the points system instituted a novel form of exclusion, whereby applicants who could not demonstrate their potential in a capitalistic framework were denied entry. In the case of Uganda, and as the records show, the Kampala team used the points system to judge the capabilities of the Ugandan Asian refugees and denied entry to those who were not deemed skilled or proficient enough—those who would require more help from the Canadian government to resettle. Thus, through historical discourse analysis, this paper has revealed that Canada’s reaction to Amin’s expulsion order symbolized a continuation, rather than a break, with the status quo: state interest and exclusionary policies still informed Canada’s response to these refugees.
Endnotes
[1] The label “Ugandan Asian” hides the incredible diversity of the South Asian community in Uganda. For the sake of convenience, however, this paper uses the shorthand “Uganda Asian” while recognizing its limitations. For the diversity of the South Asian community in Uganda, see Stephanie Jones, “Merchant-Kings and Everymen: Narratives of the South Asian Diaspora of East Africa,” Journal of East African Studies, 1, no. 1 (2007): 16-33 as well as Margret Frenz, “Migration, Identity and Post-Colonial Change in Uganda: A Goan Perspective,” Immigrants and Minorities, 31, no. 1 (2013): 48-73.
[2] Library and Archives Canada (LAC), “Statement of the Prime Minister,” Department of External Affairs, vol. 8886, Apr. 1 1972 – Aug. 25 1972, Aug. 24. 1972.
[3] Ibid.
[4]“PM’s Asian Pledge ‘Genuinely Humane,’” Ottawa Journal, Aug. 25 1972, Hempel Collection, Carleton University, Ottawa, https://carleton.ca/uganda-collection/wp-content/uploads/BINDER1_UGANDA.pdf.
[5]Since these Ugandan Asians were not outside their country of origin, they were not considered refugees as defined by the 1951 Convention. Since the literature, however, frequently refers them as “refugees,” this paper has taken a similar approach, and where appropriate, it also refers to them as “stateless.”
[6] “Trudeau Defends Admission of Uganda’s Expelled Asians,” Toronto Star, Sept. 25 1972, Hempel Collection, Carleton University, Ottawa, https://carleton.ca/uganda-collection/wp-content/uploads/BINDER4_UGANDA.pdf.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Rahim Mohamed, “A Brief History of the Ismailis in Canada,” Policy Options, Mar. 8, 2017, https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/march-2017/a-brief-history-of-the-ismailis-in-canada/.
[10] Shezan Muhammedi, “Lessons Learned from the Ugandan Asian Refugees,” Active History, Sept. 14, 2015, http://activehistory.ca/2015/09/political-will-public-resources-and-refugee-resettlement-lessons-learned-from-uganda/.
[11] Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, “1972 Ugandan Refugees: An Honourable Place,” CBC, Nov. 23, 2016, https://www.cbc.ca/radio/rewind/1972-ugandan-refugees-an-honourable-place-in-canada-1.3860296.
[12]For its work resettling refugees in the 1970s and 1980s, Canada was awarded the UN Nansen Medal in 1986—the only country to receive the award. Fleras, Immigration Canada: Evolving Realities and Emerging Challenges in a Postnational World (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015), 157.
[13]“Brief History of Canada’s Responses to Refugees,” Canadian Council for Refugees, Apr. 2009, https://ccrweb.ca/en/brief-history-canadas-responses-refugees.
[14]Laura Madokoro, “‘Belated Signing’: Race-Thinking and Canada’s Approach to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees,” in Dominion of Race: Rethinking Canada’s International History, eds. Laura Madokoro, Francine McKenzie, and David Meren (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017), 162.
[15]Frederick Cooper, Plantation Slavery on the East Coast of Africa. (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann
Publishers, 1997).
[16]David Northrup. Indentured Labour in the Age of Imperialism, 1834-1922. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University, 1995).
[17]Robert Gregory, South Asians in East Africa: An Economic and Social History, 1890-1980.
(Colorado: Westview Press, 1993).
[18]Yumiko Hamai, “Imperial Burden’ or ‘Jews of Africa’?: An Analysis of Political and Media Discourse in the Ugandan Asian Crisis (1972),” Twentieth Century British History, 22, no. 1, (2011), 420.
[19] Mahmood Mamdani, From Citizen to Refugee: Uganda Asians Come to Britain (Cape Town: Pambazuka Press, 2011), 31.
[20] Hamai, “Imperial Burden’ or ‘Jews of Africa’?” 420.
[21]Andrew Rice, The Teeth May Smile but the Heart Does Not Forget: Murder and Memory in Uganda, (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009).
[22] Nicolas Van Hear, “Editorial Introduction to the Ugandan Asian Theme Papers,” Journal of Refugee Studies 6, no. 3, (1993), 226.
[23] Phillip Short, “We Accept Our Responsibilities,” The London Times, Aug. 13, Hempel Collection, Carleton University, Ottawa, https://carleton.ca/uganda-collection/wp-content/uploads/BINDER1_UGANDA.pdf.
[24] LAC, “Speaking Notes: The Ugandan Asians,” Department of External Affairs, vol. 8886, Apr. 1 1972 – Aug. 25 1972, Aug. 18 1972.
[25] Ibid.
[26]LAC, “Memorandum to the Cabinet: Immigration to Canada of Asian Expellees from Uganda,” File Number, 5850-3-650, pt. 3, vol. 4, Record Group 76, Box 990, Sept. 1 1972 – Sept. 15, Sept 13. 1972.
[27] Muhammedi, “Gifts from Amin,” 142.
[28]Muhammedi, “Gifts from Amin,” 99.
[29] Ibid.
[30] LAC, “Letter from Prime Minister to Nyerere,” 5850-3-650, pt. 3, vol. 4, Record Group 76, Box 990, Sept. 1 1972 – Sept. 15, Sept. 7 1972.
[31] LAC, “Ugandan Asians,” Department of External Affairs, vol. 8886, Apr. 1 1972 – Aug. 25 1972, Aug. 17, 1972.
[32] As per Article 1A(2) of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.
[33] LAC, “Background Note on Asians of Undetermined Nationality from Uganda,” File Number, 5850-3-650, pt. 8, vol. 9, Record Group 76, Box 990, Jan. 4 – Feb. 28, 1973, Jan 31. 1973.
[34] Ninette Kelley and Michael Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic: A History of Canadian Immigration Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 99.
[35]Ibid., 138-39.
[36]Ibid., 139-40.
[37]Ibid.
[38]Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos, “Dismantling White Canada: Race, Rights, and the Origins of the Points System,” in Wanted and Welcome? Policies for Highly Skilled Immigrants in Comparative Perspective, ed. Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos (Toronto: Springer 2013), 23.
[39]Ibid., 31.
[40]Ninette Kelley and Michael Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic, 261-66.
[41]“Brief History of Canada’s Responses to Refugees,” Canadian Council for Refugees, Apr. 2009, https://ccrweb.ca/en/brief-history-canadas-responses-refugees.
[42] Valerie Knowles, Strangers at Our Gates: Canadian Immigration and Immigration Policy, 1540-2015 (Toronto: Dundurn, 2016) 208-9.
[43] Jérôme Elie, “Histories of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies,” in The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced MigrationSstudies, eds. E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, G. Loescher, K. Long, and N. Sigona (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 15-25; Peter Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
[44] A. Holian and D. Cohen, “Introduction,” Journal of Refugee Studies, 25, no. 3 (2010), 324.
[45] Laura Madokoro, “Belated Signing,” 2017; Gerald Dirks, Canada’s Refugee Policy: Indifference or Opportunism. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1977); Reg Whitaker, Double Standard: The Secret History of Canadian Immigration. Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1987); Harold Troper and Irving Abella, None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982); Barbara Roberts, Whence They Came: Deportation from Canada 1900-1935 (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1988); S. Diab, “Fear and (In)security: The Canadian Government’s Response to the Chilean Refugees,” Refuge, 31, no. 2 (2015), 51-62.
[46] e.g., Kelley and Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic, 2010; Fleras, Immigration Canada, 2015; Knowles, Strangers at Our Gates: Canadian Immigration and Immigration Policy, 1540-2015, 2016.
[47] J. Raska, Czech Refugees in Cold War Canada: 1945-1989 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2018).
[48] M. Molloy, P. Duschinsky, K. Jansen, and R. Shalka. Running on Empty: Canada and the Indochinese Refugees, 1975-1980 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017).
[49] Dirks, Canada’s Refugee Policy: Indifference or Opportunism, vii.
[50] Ninette Kelley and Michael Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic, 367.
[51] Harold Troper, “Canada’s Immigration Policy since 1945,” International Journal, 48, no. 2, (1993), 263.
[52] Ibid.
[53] Shezan Muhammedi, “Gifts from Amin: The Resettlement, Integration, and Identities of Ugandan Asian Refugees in Canada” (PhD Dissertation, Western University, 2017).
[54]Asa McKercher and Philip Van Huizen, “Introduction: Undiplomatic History Rethinking Canada and the World,” in Undiplomatic History: The New Study of Canada and the World, eds. Asa McKercher and Philip Van Huizen (Kingston-Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019) 4.
[55]Laura Madokoro and Francine McKenzie, “Introduction: Writing Race into Canada’s International History” in Dominion of Race: Rethinking Canada’s International History, eds. Laura Madokoro, Francine McKenzie, and David Meren (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017), 4.
[56]Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (London: Penguin, 2017) 206-89.
[57]R. Wodak and M. Meyer, “Critical Discourse Studies: History, Agenda, Theory, and Methodology,” in Methods of Critical Discourse Studies, eds. R. Wodak and M. Meyer (Oakland: Sage, 2017) 1-23.
[58]Y. Park, “Historical Discourse Analysis,” in The Sage Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods, ed. L. Given (Oakland: Sage, 2008) 393-95.
[59] Michael Barnett and Thomas G. Weiss, “Humanitarianism: A Brief History of the Present,” in Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics, eds. Michael Barnett and Thomas G. Weiss (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2008), 1-49.
[60] Michael Barnett, “Evolution without Progress? Humanitarianism in a World of Hurt,” International Journal, 63, no. 4, (2009), 625.
[61] Ibid.
[62] B.S. Chimni, “The Birth of a ‘Discipline’: From Refugee to Forced Migration Studies,” Journal of Refugee Studies, 22, no. 1, (2009), 17.
[63] Didier Fassin, Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012).
[64] Ibid., xi-xii.
[65] LAC, “Report on the Conference of Region ‘A’ in Hong Kong,” File Number 5850-3-650, pt. 1. vol. 2, Record Group 76, Box 990, Apr. 1968 – Aug 15 1972, Nov. 27 1968.
[66] LAC, “African Tour,” File Number 5850-3-508, pt. 1, vol. 2, Record Group 76, Box 990 April 1968 –Aug 15 1972, May 13 1970.
[67] LAC, “Immigration from East Africa,” File Number 5850-3-650, pt.1, vol. 2, Record Group 76, Box 990, Apr. 1968 –Aug. 15 1972, Jan 13. 1972.
[68] LAC, “Area Visit to Africa,” File Number, 5850-3-650, pt. 1, vol. 2, Record Group 76, Box 990, Apr. 1968 – Aug. 15 1972, Mar. 8 1972.
[69] Ibid.
[70] Ibid.
[71] Ibid.
[72] Ibid.
[73] Ibid.
[74] LAC, “Immigration from East Africa,” File Number, 5850-3-650, pt. 1, vol. 2, Record Group 76, Box 990, Apr. 1968 –Aug. 15 1972, Jan. 13 1972.
[75] Qtd. in Shezan Muhammedi, “Gifts from Amin,” 120-121.
[76] LAC, “Meeting on Uganda’s Expulsion of Asians,” File Number, 20-UGDA-1-3, Department of External Affairs, vol. 8886, Apr. 1 1972 – Aug. 25 1972, Aug. 8 1972.
[77] LAC, Manpower Planning Unit Background Brief. “The Manpower Characteristics and Importance to Uganda of Asian Residents,” File Number 5850-3-650, pt. 3, vol. 4, Record Group 76, Box 990, Sept. 1 1972 – Sept. 15, Sept. 1 1972.
[78] Ibid.
[79] Ibid.
[80] Ibid.
[81] Ibid.
[82] Ibid.
[83] LAC, “Memorandum to the Cabinet Immigration to Canada of Asian Expellees from Uganda.
[84]LAC, “Record of Cabinet Decision,” Department of External Affairs, vol. 8886, Apr. 1 1972 – Aug. 25 1972, Aug. 24 1972.
[85] LAC, “Ismaili Coaching Sheets,” Ismaili File Number 5750-11, pt. 1, vol. 1214, Record Group 76, Aug. 28 1972 – Aug. 3 1976, May 27 1974.
[86] LAC, “Selection Criteria,” File Number, 58503650, pt. 1, vol. 2, Record Group 76, Box 990, Apr. 1968 – Aug. 15 1972.
[87]LAC, “Memoranda to Cabinet on Immigration Policy,” File Number 58503650, pt. 1, vol. 2, Record Group 76, Box 990, Apr. 1968 – Aug. 15 1972, July 27 1970.
[88] LAC, “Asians into Brazil,” File Number 20-UGDA-1-3, 5858-3-659, pt. 5, vol. 6, Record Group 76, Box 990, Oct 1 – Oct 15 1972, Oct. 6 1972.
[89] Roger St. Vincent, Seven Crested Cranes: Asian Exodus from Uganda: The Role of Canada’s Mission to Kampala, (Canadian Immigration and Historical Society, 1993), 217.
[90] LAC, ““Memorandum to the Cabinet”
[91] Ibid.
[92] Ibid.
[93] Ibid.
[94] St. Vincent, Seven Crested Cranes, 228
[95] Ibid.
[96] Ibid.
[97] Ibid.
[98] LAC, “Background Note on Asians of Undetermined Nationality from Uganda,” File Number 5850-3-650, pt. 8, vol. 9, Jan. 4–Feb. 28 1973, Jan. 3 1973.
[99] Ibid.
[100] Étienne Balibar, “Is There a Neo-Racism?” in Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, eds. Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein (London: Verso, 1991), 25-26.
[101] Ibid.
[102] Sherene Razack, Casting Out, The Eviction of Muslins from Western Law and Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 27.
[103] Mohamed, “A Brief History of the Ismailis in Canada,” Policy Options.
[104] “Aga Khan Applauds Canada for Decades Long Partnership,” AKDN, May 2 2018, www.akdn.org/akdn/akdn/press-release/aga-khan-applauds-canada-decades-long-partnership.
[105] Mohamed, “A Brief History of the Ismailis in Canada,” Policy Options.
[106] “Our Approach,” AKF, www.akf.org.uk/our-approach-2/.
[107] Marina Jimenez, “7 Things You Wanted to Know about the Aga Khan Controversy, but Were Afraid to Ask,” Toronto Star, Jan. 12 2017, www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/01/12/7-things-you-wanted-to-know-about-the-aga-khan-controversy-but-were-afraid-to-ask.html.
[108] “Memo from the Aga Khan,” Ismaili File Number 5750-11, pt. 1, vol. 1214, Record Group 76, Aug. 28 1972 – Aug. 3 1976, Aug. 25 1972.
[109] Ibid.
[110] Ibid.
[111] Ibid.
[112] LAC, “Background Paper.” File Number 5850-3-650 pt. 4, vol. 5, Record Group 76, Box 990 Sept. 16–Sept. 30 1972.
[113] Ibid.
[114] Ibid.
[115] Ibid.
[116] Ibid.
[117] Ibid.
[118] LAC, “Settlement of Ismailis from East Africa.”
[119] Ibid.
[120] LAC, “Ismailis in British Columbia.”
[121] LAC, “Minutes of the Meeting.”
[122] Ibid.
[123] Ibid.
[124] Ibid.
[125] Ibid.
[126] Ibid.
[127] Ibid.
[128] Ibid.
[129] LAC, “Meeting with the Aga Khan — Ismailis in Uganda,” File Number 5850-3-650, pt. 4, vol. 5, Record Group 76, Box 990, Sept. 16–Sept. 30 1972, Sept 28 1972.
[130] Ibid.
[131] Ibid.
[131] Ibid.
[133] St. Vincent, Seven Crested Cranes, 217.
[134] Ibid.
[135] Ibid., 218.
[136] Ibid., 219.
[137] Ibid., 228.
[138] LAC, “Trudeau Letter to the Aga Khan,” Ismaili File Number, 5750-11, pt. 1, vol. 1214, Record Group 76, Aug. 28 1972 – Aug 3. 1976, Mar. 21 1974.
[139] Ibid.
[140] Ibid.
[141] LAC, “Immigration from Zaire, “Ismaili File Number 5750-11, pt. 1, vol. 1214, Record Group 76, Aug. 28 1972 – Aug. 3 1976, Apr. 9 1974.
[142] Ibid.
[143] Ibid.
[144] LAC, “My Dear Prime Minister,” Ismaili File Number 5750-11 pt. 1, vol. 1214, Record Group 76, Aug. 28 1972 – Aug 3 1976, Apr. 16 1974.
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[1] The label “Ugandan Asian” hides the incredible diversity of the South Asian community in Uganda. For the sake of convenience, however, this paper uses the shorthand “Uganda Asian” while recognizing its limitations. For the diversity of the South Asian community in Uganda, see Stephanie Jones, “Merchant-Kings and Everymen: Narratives of the South Asian Diaspora of East Africa,” Journal of East African Studies, 1, no. 1 (2007): 16-33 as well as Margret Frenz, “Migration, Identity and Post-Colonial Change in Uganda: A Goan Perspective,” Immigrants and Minorities, 31, no. 1 (2013): 48-73.
[2] Library and Archives Canada (LAC), “Statement of the Prime Minister,” Department of External Affairs, vol. 8886, Apr. 1 1972 – Aug. 25 1972, Aug. 24. 1972.
[3] Ibid.
[4]“PM’s Asian Pledge ‘Genuinely Humane,’” Ottawa Journal, Aug. 25 1972, Hempel Collection, Carleton University, Ottawa, https://carleton.ca/uganda-collection/wp-content/uploads/BINDER1_UGANDA.pdf.
[5]Since these Ugandan Asians were not outside their country of origin, they were not considered refugees as defined by the 1951 Convention. Since the literature, however, frequently refers them as “refugees,” this paper has taken a similar approach, and where appropriate, it also refers to them as “stateless.”
[6] “Trudeau Defends Admission of Uganda’s Expelled Asians,” Toronto Star, Sept. 25 1972, Hempel Collection, Carleton University, Ottawa, https://carleton.ca/uganda-collection/wp-content/uploads/BINDER4_UGANDA.pdf.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Rahim Mohamed, “A Brief History of the Ismailis in Canada,” Policy Options, Mar. 8, 2017, https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/march-2017/a-brief-history-of-the-ismailis-in-canada/.
[10] Shezan Muhammedi, “Lessons Learned from the Ugandan Asian Refugees,” Active History, Sept. 14, 2015, http://activehistory.ca/2015/09/political-will-public-resources-and-refugee-resettlement-lessons-learned-from-uganda/.
[11] Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, “1972 Ugandan Refugees: An Honourable Place,” CBC, Nov. 23, 2016, https://www.cbc.ca/radio/rewind/1972-ugandan-refugees-an-honourable-place-in-canada-1.3860296.
[12]For its work resettling refugees in the 1970s and 1980s, Canada was awarded the UN Nansen Medal in 1986—the only country to receive the award. Fleras, Immigration Canada: Evolving Realities and Emerging Challenges in a Postnational World (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015), 157.
[13]“Brief History of Canada’s Responses to Refugees,” Canadian Council for Refugees, Apr. 2009, https://ccrweb.ca/en/brief-history-canadas-responses-refugees.
[14]Laura Madokoro, “‘Belated Signing’: Race-Thinking and Canada’s Approach to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees,” in Dominion of Race: Rethinking Canada’s International History, eds. Laura Madokoro, Francine McKenzie, and David Meren (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017), 162.
[15]Frederick Cooper, Plantation Slavery on the East Coast of Africa. (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann
Publishers, 1997).
[16]David Northrup. Indentured Labour in the Age of Imperialism, 1834-1922. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University, 1995).
[17]Robert Gregory, South Asians in East Africa: An Economic and Social History, 1890-1980.
(Colorado: Westview Press, 1993).
[18]Yumiko Hamai, “Imperial Burden’ or ‘Jews of Africa’?: An Analysis of Political and Media Discourse in the Ugandan Asian Crisis (1972),” Twentieth Century British History, 22, no. 1, (2011), 420.
[19] Mahmood Mamdani, From Citizen to Refugee: Uganda Asians Come to Britain (Cape Town: Pambazuka Press, 2011), 31.
[20] Hamai, “Imperial Burden’ or ‘Jews of Africa’?” 420.
[21]Andrew Rice, The Teeth May Smile but the Heart Does Not Forget: Murder and Memory in Uganda, (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009).
[22] Nicolas Van Hear, “Editorial Introduction to the Ugandan Asian Theme Papers,” Journal of Refugee Studies 6, no. 3, (1993), 226.
[23] Phillip Short, “We Accept Our Responsibilities,” The London Times, Aug. 13, Hempel Collection, Carleton University, Ottawa, https://carleton.ca/uganda-collection/wp-content/uploads/BINDER1_UGANDA.pdf.
[24] LAC, “Speaking Notes: The Ugandan Asians,” Department of External Affairs, vol. 8886, Apr. 1 1972 – Aug. 25 1972, Aug. 18 1972.
[25] Ibid.
[26]LAC, “Memorandum to the Cabinet: Immigration to Canada of Asian Expellees from Uganda,” File Number, 5850-3-650, pt. 3, vol. 4, Record Group 76, Box 990, Sept. 1 1972 – Sept. 15, Sept 13. 1972.
[27] Muhammedi, “Gifts from Amin,” 142.
[28]Muhammedi, “Gifts from Amin,” 99.
[29] Ibid.
[30] LAC, “Letter from Prime Minister to Nyerere,” 5850-3-650, pt. 3, vol. 4, Record Group 76, Box 990, Sept. 1 1972 – Sept. 15, Sept. 7 1972.
[31] LAC, “Ugandan Asians,” Department of External Affairs, vol. 8886, Apr. 1 1972 – Aug. 25 1972, Aug. 17, 1972.
[32] As per Article 1A(2) of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.
[33] LAC, “Background Note on Asians of Undetermined Nationality from Uganda,” File Number, 5850-3-650, pt. 8, vol. 9, Record Group 76, Box 990, Jan. 4 – Feb. 28, 1973, Jan 31. 1973.
[34] Ninette Kelley and Michael Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic: A History of Canadian Immigration Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 99.
[35]Ibid., 138-39.
[36]Ibid., 139-40.
[37]Ibid.
[38]Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos, “Dismantling White Canada: Race, Rights, and the Origins of the Points System,” in Wanted and Welcome? Policies for Highly Skilled Immigrants in Comparative Perspective, ed. Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos (Toronto: Springer 2013), 23.
[39]Ibid., 31.
[40]Ninette Kelley and Michael Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic, 261-66.
[41]“Brief History of Canada’s Responses to Refugees,” Canadian Council for Refugees, Apr. 2009, https://ccrweb.ca/en/brief-history-canadas-responses-refugees.
[42] Valerie Knowles, Strangers at Our Gates: Canadian Immigration and Immigration Policy, 1540-2015 (Toronto: Dundurn, 2016) 208-9.
[43]Jé rôme Elie, “Histories of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies,” in The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced MigrationSstudies, eds. E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, G. Loescher, K. Long, and N. Sigona (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 15-25; Peter Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
[44] A. Holian and D. Cohen, “Introduction,” Journal of Refugee Studies, 25, no. 3 (2010), 324.
[45] Laura Madokoro, “Belated Signing,” 2017; Gerald Dirks, Canada’s Refugee Policy: Indifference or Opportunism. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1977); Reg Whitaker, Double Standard: The Secret History of Canadian Immigration. Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1987); Harold Troper and Irving Abella, None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982); Barbara Roberts, Whence They Came: Deportation from Canada 1900-1935 (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1988); S. Diab, “Fear and (In)security: The Canadian Government’s Response to the Chilean Refugees,” Refuge, 31, no. 2 (2015), 51-62.
[46]e.g., Kelley and Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic, 2010; Fleras, Immigration Canada, 2015; Knowles, Strangers at Our Gates: Canadian Immigration and Immigration Policy, 1540-2015, 2016.
[47] J. Raska, Czech Refugees in Cold War Canada: 1945-1989 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2018).
[48] M. Molloy, P. Duschinsky, K. Jansen, and R. Shalka. Running on Empty: Canada and the Indochinese Refugees, 1975-1980 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017).
[49] Dirks, Canada’s Refugee Policy: Indifference or Opportunism, vii.
[50] Ninette Kelley and Michael Trebilcock, The Making of the Mosaic, 367.
[51] Harold Troper, “Canada’s Immigration Policy since 1945,” International Journal, 48, no. 2, (1993), 263.
[52] Ibid.
[53] Shezan Muhammedi, “Gifts from Amin: The Resettlement, Integration, and Identities of Ugandan Asian Refugees in Canada” (PhD Dissertation, Western University, 2017).
[54]Asa McKercher and Philip Van Huizen, “Introduction: Undiplomatic History Rethinking Canada and the World,” in Undiplomatic History: The New Study of Canada and the World, eds. Asa McKercher and Philip Van Huizen (Kingston-Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019) 4.
[55]Laura Madokoro and Francine McKenzie, “Introduction: Writing Race into Canada’s International History” in Dominion of Race: Rethinking Canada’s International History, eds. Laura Madokoro, Francine McKenzie, and David Meren (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017), 4.
[56]Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (London: Penguin, 2017) 206-89.
[57]R. Wodak and M. Meyer, “Critical Discourse Studies: History, Agenda, Theory, and Methodology,” in Methods of Critical Discourse Studies, eds. R. Wodak and M. Meyer (Oakland: Sage, 2017) 1-23.
[58]Y. Park, “Historical Discourse Analysis,” in The Sage Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods, ed. L. Given (Oakland: Sage, 2008) 393-95.
[59] Michael Barnett and Thomas G. Weiss, “Humanitarianism: A Brief History of the Present,” in Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics, eds. Michael Barnett and Thomas G. Weiss (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2008), 1-49.
[60] Michael Barnett, “Evolution without Progress? Humanitarianism in a World of Hurt,” International Journal, 63, no. 4, (2009), 625.
[61] Ibid.
[62] B.S. Chimni, “The Birth of a ‘Discipline’: From Refugee to Forced Migration Studies,” Journal of Refugee Studies, 22, no. 1, (2009), 17.
[63] Didier Fassin, Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012).
[64] Ibid., xi-xii.
[65] LAC, “Report on the Conference of Region ‘A’ in Hong Kong,” File Number 5850-3-650, pt. 1. vol. 2, Record Group 76, Box 990, Apr. 1968 – Aug 15 1972, Nov. 27 1968.
[66] LAC, “African Tour,” File Number 5850-3-508, pt. 1, vol. 2, Record Group 76, Box 990 April 1968 –Aug 15 1972, May 13 1970.
[67] LAC, “Immigration from East Africa,” File Number 5850-3-650, pt.1, vol. 2, Record Group 76, Box 990, Apr. 1968 –Aug. 15 1972, Jan 13. 1972.
[68] LAC, “Area Visit to Africa,” File Number, 5850-3-650, pt. 1, vol. 2, Record Group 76, Box 990, Apr. 1968 – Aug. 15 1972, Mar. 8 1972.
[70] Ibid.
[71] Ibid.
[72] Ibid.
[73] Ibid.
[74] LAC, “Immigration from East Africa,” File Number, 5850-3-650, pt. 1, vol. 2, Record Group 76, Box 990, Apr. 1968 –Aug. 15 1972, Jan. 13 1972.
[75] Qtd. in Shezan Muhammedi, “Gifts from Amin,” 120-121.
[76] LAC, “Meeting on Uganda’s Expulsion of Asians,” File Number, 20-UGDA-1-3, Department of External Affairs, vol. 8886, Apr. 1 1972 – Aug. 25 1972, Aug. 8 1972.
[77] LAC, Manpower Planning Unit Background Brief. “The Manpower Characteristics and Importance to Uganda of Asian Residents,” File Number 5850-3-650, pt. 3, vol. 4, Record Group 76, Box 990, Sept. 1 1972 – Sept. 15, Sept. 1 1972.
[78] Ibid.
[79] Ibid.
[80] Ibid.
[81] Ibid.
[82] Ibid.
[84]LAC, “Record of Cabinet Decision,” Department of External Affairs, vol. 8886, Apr. 1 1972 – Aug. 25 1972, Aug. 24 1972.
[85] LAC, “Ismaili Coaching Sheets,” Ismaili File Number 5750-11, pt. 1, vol. 1214, Record Group 76, Aug. 28 1972 – Aug. 3 1976, May 27 1974.
[86] LAC, “Selection Criteria,” File Number, 58503650, pt. 1, vol. 2, Record Group 76, Box 990, Apr. 1968 – Aug. 15 1972.
[87]LAC, “Memoranda to Cabinet on Immigration Policy,” File Number 58503650, pt. 1, vol. 2, Record Group 76, Box 990, Apr. 1968 – Aug. 15 1972, July 27 1970.
[88] LAC, “Asians into Brazil,” File Number 20-UGDA-1-3, 5858-3-659, pt. 5, vol. 6, Record Group 76, Box 990, Oct 1 – Oct 15 1972, Oct. 6 1972.
[89] Roger St. Vincent, Seven Crested Cranes: Asian Exodus from Uganda: The Role of Canada’s Mission to Kampala, (Canadian Immigration and Historical Society, 1993), 217.
[91] Ibid.
[92]Ibid.
[93]Ibid.
[94] St. Vincent, Seven Crested Cranes, 228
[95] Ibid.
[96] Ibid.
[97] Ibid.
[98] LAC, “Background Note on Asians of Undetermined Nationality from Uganda,” File Number 5850-3-650, pt. 8, vol. 9, Jan. 4–Feb. 28 1973, Jan. 3 1973.
[99] Ibid.
[100] Étienne Balibar, “Is There a Neo-Racism?” in Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, eds. Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein (London: Verso, 1991), 25-26.
[101] Ibid.
[102]Sherene Razack, Casting Out, The Eviction of Muslins from Western Law and Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 27.
[103] Mohamed, “A Brief History of the Ismailis in Canada,” Policy Options.
[104] “Aga Khan Applauds Canada for Decades Long Partnership,” AKDN, May 2 2018, www.akdn.org/akdn/akdn/press-release/aga-khan-applauds-canada-decades-long-partnership.
[105] Mohamed, “A Brief History of the Ismailis in Canada,” Policy Options.
[106] “Our Approach,” AKF, www.akf.org.uk/our-approach-2/.
[107] Marina Jimenez, “7 Things You Wanted to Know about the Aga Khan Controversy, but Were Afraid to Ask,” Toronto Star, Jan. 12 2017, www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/01/12/7-things-you-wanted-to-know-about-the-aga-khan-controversy-but-were-afraid-to-ask.html.
[108] “Memo from the Aga Khan,” Ismaili File Number 5750-11, pt. 1, vol. 1214, Record Group 76, Aug. 28 1972 – Aug. 3 1976, Aug. 25 1972.
[109] Ibid.
[110] Ibid.
[111] Ibid.
[113] Ibid.
[114] Ibid.
[115] Ibid.
[116] Ibid.
[117] Ibid.
[119] Ibid.
[122] Ibid.
[123] Ibid.
[124] Ibid.
[125] Ibid.
[126] Ibid.
[127] Ibid.
[128] Ibid.
[129] LAC, “Meeting with the Aga Khan — Ismailis in Uganda,” File Number 5850-3-650, pt. 4, vol. 5, Record Group 76, Box 990, Sept. 16–Sept. 30 1972, Sept 28 1972.
[130] Ibid.
[131] Ibid.
[132] Ibid.
[133] St. Vincent, Seven Crested Cranes, 217.
[134] Ibid.
[135] Ibid., 218.
[136] Ibid., 219.
[137] Ibid., 228.
[138] LAC, “Trudeau Letter to the Aga Khan,” Ismaili File Number, 5750-11, pt. 1, vol. 1214, Record Group 76, Aug. 28 1972 – Aug 3. 1976, Mar. 21 1974.
[139] Ibid.
[140] Ibid.
[141] LAC, “Immigration from Zaire, “Ismaili File Number 5750-11, pt. 1, vol. 1214, Record Group 76, Aug. 28 1972 – Aug. 3 1976, Apr. 9 1974.
[142] Ibid.
[143] Ibid.
[144] LAC, “My Dear Prime Minister,” Ismaili File Number 5750-11 pt. 1, vol. 1214, Record Group 76, Aug. 28 1972 – Aug 3 1976, Apr. 16 1974.