During the last decades of the nineteenth century, anxiety arose in the Australian colonies about the amount of ‘coloured’ immigrants travelling to Australia, particularly from China (National Archives of Australia, 2015). Subsequently, one of the first legislations in the new Federal Parliament was the Immigration Restriction Act (IRA). This Act made it almost impossible for Asians and Pacific Islanders to migrate to Australia, along with the Pacific Islander Labourers Act and the Post and Telegraph Act 1901 (NSW Migration Heritage Centre, 2010).
The aim of this and other related legislation was to limit coloured immigration and thus preserve the leadership of the British (National Archives of Australia, 2015). Two days before Christmas Day
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Australians made it clear that they wanted to conserve and protect their white colonies, since the ‘flood of foreigners’ at the time of the gold rushes (ibid). Each colony had its own anti-Chinese laws by the 1890s (ibid). The problem of Asian migration was frequently raised in the media and in political cartoons (ibid). People who had migrated from the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales) primarily made up Australia in 1900 (ibid). About 17 percent of the population were British-born (ibid). From the non-Indigenous population, 75 percent were born in Australia, and most had parents or grandparents who travelled out from Britain (ibid). While people from Asia and the Pacific Islands formed a very small proportion of the population, it was a fear of them that led to one of the first acts of the federal government being a Bill to stop them migrating into the country …show more content…
Australia wanted to remain a country of white people who lived by British traditions. Trade unions were keen to prevent labour competition from Chinese and Pacific Islander migrants who they feared would undercut wages (NSW Migration Heritage Centre, 2010).
The Outcomes
The IMA allowed the government to reject any person who 'when asked to do so by an officer fails to write out at dictation and sign in the presence of the officer, a passage of 50 words in length in a European language directed by the officer'. An immigrant during the first year of residence. During their first years of residence, any immigrant could be assigned a Dictation Test to complete.
It was originally proposed that the Test would be in English, but it was argued that this could discourage the migration of European people and benefit Japanese people, African-American people. Instead, any 'European language' was required. To lessen offence to the Japanese, in 1905 this was changed to 'any prescribed language'(NSW Migration Heritage Centre,
Many people still thought that a woman's place was "in the kitchen", this changed shortly after the second world war. 500,000 women joined the workforce post WW1 because all of the men had gone to war. This set Australia up and benefited from more people with a wider experience in many jobs.
I argue that the ideologies behind The Assimilation Policy were evident since the first white settlers had arrived in 1788. Since first contact, Aboriginal people’s values, customs, beliefs and traditional way of life began to erode. From the 1850s onwards, Aboriginal people were forced onto reserves, and then into towns and cities in the mid 20th century . Many people feared that the ‘Australian’ culture was being affected by immigrants. Since the early 1900s, there had been a ‘White Australia’ policy and assimilation was expected upon arrival. However, Aboriginal people did not immigrate, so their policy, dictated by the Australian States and Commonwealth Government was known as The Policy of Assimilation. Assimilation policies were supported by racist assumptions and represented by settler nationalist imperatives . In the 1950s, assimilation policies for Aboriginal people were supported by the
Before the 1900s, there was no Australia, just 6 colonies. New south wales, South Australia, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania (the island colony). The colonies eventually joined up. Referendums were put to the people and on the 23rd of December 1901, Edmund Barton put forward and idea called the immigration act.The immigration restriction act is an act, led by the Australian parliament to limit immigration in Australia. This act formed the basis of the white Australian policy which disallowed all non-Europeans from Australia. This act was introduced on the 23rd of December 1901 by Edmund Barton.The law allowed all immigration officers a wide amount of responsibility to stop individuals from entering the country. The ACT
Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 was an Act of the parliament of Australia and was formed on the basis of the White Australian Policy, it main aim was to limit immigration to Australia of all non- white Europeans from Australia. Propaganda campaigns in Britain leaded to the largely popular immigration of British people seeking a new lifestyle the Australian Government was quick to condemn them with racial campaigns against the Chinese. Many state that the White Australian policy was to keep Australia’s economic statues alive and to maintaining living standards and that it was not intended to be racist towards the Chinese. The Chinese were specifically targeted by the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 as the Government had a mixed mindset on
One of the first acts of the Commonwealth Government of Australia was the implementation of the White Australia Policy. This shows that the newly federated nation was built on fear and racism. The White Australia policy was a law that changed Australia and has shaped the way it is today. This essay will reflect how the policy was implemented, how it affected the nation as a whole, why the Australians feared the Chinese and how Australia was viewed from other federated nations, as a result of implementation of the policy.
Australia was in a time of crisis during World War 2 (1945) when they were threatened by the Japanese invasions. Australia did not have a big population at that time resulting in not have a strong defence to protect Australia. The Department of Immigration that was created then strongly urged that Australia needed an increase in its population by at least 1% each year. They needed a plan to gain a huge population; they needed to populate or perish!
There was more or less no assistance of any kind given to the Chinese migrants, as immigration was rather a haphazard affair in the 19th century (especially to an isolated young country like Australia) and the level of racism encountered by Chinese prospectors on arrival made goldmining and making a living in Australia even harder.
The White Australian policy unofficially started in the 1850’s in the gold mines in violence against the Chinese. The start of the official White Australian policy was brought in under the new federal Australian government. The ‘Immigration restriction act’ obtained royal agreement on the 23rd of December 1901. The colonies governments were extremely concerned about the arrival of Chinese migrations, and were discussing a way to prevent the Chinese entrance into Australia. The governments discussed the problems at the Intercolonial conferences of 1880, 1888, and 1896. Up until the
In the first half of the 20th century, the Australian Government sought to create a white, uniform society. After observing an increase in the Aboriginal population and realising that they would not just ‘die out’, the Government developed assimilation policies that encouraged ‘half-cates’ Indigenous to assimilate into white community and ‘full-blood’ Aborigines would be left
The arrival of British colonists was based on a certain understanding of the world that had a racial character. The idea of terra nullius presumed that civilised humanity was achievable only by Europeans. What the British believed was settlement, was for Indigenous peoples invasion and dispossession. When the colonies federated as a Commonwealth in 1901, the organising principle was that of racial unity in the form of a White Australia. The first legislation passed by the Commonwealth Parliament was the Pacific Island Labourers Act (1901), which expelled all Pacific Islanders working in Australia. The deportation of the approximately 10,000 Pacific Islanders working in Australia - mostly in sugar plantations in Queensland - was aimed to ensure the living standards of white Australian workers wouldn't be undermined by cheap coloured labour. This was soon followed by the enactment of the Immigration Restriction Act (1901), perhaps the best known legislative instrument of the White Australia Policy. The Act would introduce the infamous dictation test used to exclude non-European
Among its other provisions, the 1917 Act required that immigrants be able to read and write in their native language, obligating the Immigration Service to begin administering literacy tests. Another change, the introduction
By 1901 there were 10,000 Pacific Islanders left working in the Queensland cane fields. Between 1904 and 1908, most of these workers were deported in an effort to ‘racially purify’ the incipient Australian nation and ‘protect’ white Australian workers from the threat of frugal labour. The Pacific Island Labourers Act of 1901 sanctioned these deportations and vetoed further recruitment after 1903. Only a minority of Islanders were sanctioned to stay in Australia and a few obnubilated from ascendant entities and stayed
The immigration restriction act was made in 1901 by the Australian Government. The Australian government made the immigration restriction Act because they were trying to minimize immigration from all non-European countries, mainly the Chinese.
Imagine yourself moving to a different country which has a completely different culture to yours and the people there who you thought would be kind and peaceful, abuse you regularly and belittle you as much as possible. You become the target of prejudice and racist attitudes by both European and the Australian government. These are the hardships and the forms of racism faced by the Chinese from the Europeans upon arriving in Australia from 1800. In 1851, gold was discovered in Australia.
During the first half of the 20th century, the government wanted to create a uniform white Australian culture (Australians Together, n.d.). Thus they implemented the Assimilation policy wherein Indigenous people were to be ceased to exist while half-castes (half Indigenous and half another nationality) were encouraged to live with the White Community (Australians Together, n.d.). It was assumed that the implementation of the Assimilation policy was because they thought that the Indigenous people would enjoy living the Western way. However, because of this policy, the consequence for the Indigenous people were immense. Not only did they lose their cultures and traditions, they also lost their identity.