Why Immigrate to Canada?

After the War of 1812, waves of immigrants came into Canada and many immigrants are coming into Canada even today. The first wave of immigrants mostly came from Britain, United States and Europe. They settled in Upper Canada and Lower Canada which was British North America at the time. Many English-speaking immigrants settled in Upper Canada, while French culture flourished in Lower Canada. Though the journey to British North America was expensive and dangerous. Immigrating to Canada would usually mean that the immigrants will never see their family and most likely not survive, especially the poorest people who had to endure passage in coffin ships. Poor food, bad hygiene and crowded conditions made disease unavoidable.

So why did these people want to go to Canada even if they knew that there was so much to risk? Well, there are certain push and pull factors that influences them to immigrate to Canada:

Push factors (reasons to why people leave their countries):

• Poverty
• Riots
• Pursue their goals
• Lack of jobs/ bad economy
• Not being able to practice religion
• Overpopulation (Britain)
• War
• Lack of farm land
• No Law and Order (China)
• Foreign Competition (China)

Pull factors (reasons why people would immigrate to Canada):

• New opportunities to become successful
• More jobs
• Higher wages of which they can send home to their families
• Improved standard of living
• Political and/or religious freedom
• land for farmers to own land (Ireland+ Scotland)
• Gold (China)
• Canadian Pacific Railway (China)
• Freedom