Immigration regimes and restriction of Black mobility

Immigration policy worked in tandem with domestic segregation to constrict Black presence. Even as Canada publicly celebrated antislavery credentials and, later, multicultural tolerance, federal administrators operationalized exclusion through pseudoscientific euphemisms like climatic unsuitability, codified in section 38 of the 1910 Immigration Act, alongside deterrence at borders and discretionary medical screening (Calliste, 1994; Maynard, 2025). The result was a demographic project that prized white settlers while rendering Black migration exceptional, precarious, and surveilled, conditions that echo today in discretionary enforcement, detention, and deportation practices that inhibit crime reporting and post-homicide cooperation among status-insecure families.