Pakistani Canadians - History in Canada

History in Canada

People from the region that would become Pakistan were among the pioneers who migrated from British India to British Columbia at the turn of the century. By 1905, as many as 200 participated in the building of that first community from modern-day Pakistan, which for a time had a small makeshift mosque in Vancouver. But most of these immigrants were sojourners rather than settlers, and they either returned to Pakistan in 1947 or moved on to the United States. Subsequently, Canada imposed a ban on South Asian immigration that remained in place until after World War II. When Canada opened its doors to South Asians again in 1949, Pakistan had been established as an independent state. Most of the Pakistanis who had settled in British Columbia were Punjabis and took advantage of the new immigration policy to sponsor members of their families.

Pakistanis began migrating to Canada in small numbers in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Immigration regulations gave preference to those with advanced education and professional skills, and the Pakistanis who came during this period, and throughout the 1960s, generally had excellent credentials. Many of them considered themselves to be sojourners, who had come to earn but not to settle, or were students who intended to return home when their degree programs were completed. While some went back, others remained to become the founding members of the Pakistani-Canadian community.

Pakistani nationals were registered in undergraduate and graduate programs at McGill University in Montreal as early as 1949, and at the University of Toronto from 1958 on. By the mid-1950s, there were five or six Pakistani families living in Montreal in addition to the students. This was probably the largest concentration of Pakistanis in the country at the time. Throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s most who arrived were young men pursuing graduate or professional studies.

In 1976, Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau introduced the Immigration Act. Since then the number of Pakistani immigrants increased dramatically, with hundreds of Pakistanis entering Canada each year. Pakistani Canadians in the 1980s tended to be urban, well-educated, and professional and are more or less familiar with western culture and ways of living. However, the dependents and relatives that they have since sponsored for permanent residence and citizenship to Canada in the years after 1990 happen to be characterized by lower levels of education, due to immigration by sponsorship. However, most of the Pakistanis immigrating to the Canada are mainly students, professionals and economic migrants who do tend to have reasonable levels of education.