After 1967, with the liberalization of Canadian immigration
policy, Alberta quickly began to receive a substantial portion of
its newcomers from outside the traditional sources of Europe and
the United States including, for the first time, a large
number of immigrants from Latin America and Africa. However, the vast majority of newcomers
during this period arrived from Asia and, in particular, Southeast
Asia.
By far, people of Chinese origin from various parts of
Southeast Asia made up the largest immigrant group. Because of Canada's policy
shift to evaluating potential immigrants on the basis of
skills and education, this new generation of immigrants generally moved into "white collar" areas of work not
traditionally occupied by Chinese-Canadians. They were also
fortunate to have an established, supportive Chinese community
within the province.
During this period Alberta also received
large numbers of:
Southeast Asians such
as Vietnamese, Filipinos and
Koreans;
South Asians, such as the East Indians and
Pakistanis; and West
Asians, including the Lebanese. However, unlike the Chinese and the
waves of Europeans who had been arriving for
decades, most of these new immigrant groups did not have existing
ethnic communities to rely on for support. Although almost
all resided in Alberta's cities, they were cultural pioneers in
their own right.
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This digital collection was
produced with financial assistance from Canada's Digital
Collections initiative, Industry Canada.