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The one-man board of immigration

Broadcast Date: July 9, 1979

From August 1977 to August 1979, Ian Hamilton was Chief Canadian Immigration Officer for all of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Burma. The only other officer was Scott Mullin, a 22-year-old Montrealer one year out of university.
On CBC Television, Mullin interviews a prospective refugee family. He talks about what it's like to do his job and how he thinks refugees will adapt to Canada.

Immigration criteria required that refugees speak English or French, or have a relative in Canada, or have a desirable profession or trade. Refugees who were accepted to Canada had to undergo a medical exam and wait in a holding camp for a few weeks before catching their flight to Canada. Indochinese refugees made up a quarter of the immigrants to Canada between 1978 and 1981 — a very high percentage when you consider that refugees as a whole usually total just ten per cent.

But Canada was slow to respond to the looming crisis. Despite the thousands lingering in refugee camps in Southeast Asia, only 9,000 Indochinese refugees settled in Canada between 1975 and 1978. This may have been because the federal government didn't want to get involved in a situation it felt was the result of America's Vietnam war. But the situation only worsened with time. Public outcry led to the government accepting 60,000 refugees between 1979 and 1980.

The one-man board of immigration

• Canada let in more Vietnamese refugees than it had any other ethnic group since 1945. • Canada accepted 350,000 refugees from 1945 to 1979: 124,000 Eastern Europeans after World War Two; 37,000 Hungarians; 12,000 Czechs; 11,000 Lebanese; 7,000 Ugandan Asians; and 7,000 Chileans.
• Before coming to Asia, Immigration Officer Ian Hamilton was posted in Sweden, Spain, Germany and Australia. He found his two-year stint in Southeast Asia, from 1977 to 1979, to be a bit of a change.

• Hamilton would interview nearly 1,000 refugees per day, taking only one short break and working past midnight. He and his assistant would eat refugee rations and sleep on the wooden benches where they worked.
• Some other pitfalls of the job: Hamilton reported that his hair turned grey, he lost several pounds, and he spent five weeks in bed with hepatitis.
• Scott Mullin was Canada's senior representative in Iran until 1991 and is now vice-president of Government and Community Relations at TD Bank Financial Group.

• A new Canadian Immigration Act went into effect in 1978. It contained Canada's first formal policy on the status of refugees. A provision in the new act allowed the government to admit a whole class of persons — such as Indochinese — into the country under special circumstances.
• The new Immigration Act also contained a provision that permitted and encouraged private sponsorship of refugees. Groups of five or more adult Canadian citizens could sponsor refugees directly.

The one-man board of immigration

Medium: Television

Program: CBC Newsmagazine

Broadcast Date: July 9, 1979

Guest(s): Scott Mullin

Host: Don McNeill
Reporter: Peter Mansbridge

Duration: 2:55

Last updated:
July 20, 2004