Become British Canadians American prospectors urged

Wednesday, 30 December 2009 00:00

December 30, 1870. British Columbia's foreign residents—mostly Americans, drawn in great number by gold fever — are urged to acquire citizenships to participate fully in the affairs of the colony, soon to become a province of Canada.

"Aliens" already hold "social and industrial positions in every department of society," Armor De Comos, the future B.C. premier, writes in his paper, the Victoria Standard. Although they could not hold political office, the American miners were allowed to vote in elections for the first legislature following the merger of the former colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. But that right has now been abolished. The self-professed "lover of the world" doesn't think this is morally right, but nonetheless urges aliens to become naturalized citizens, for their own good and the good of the country, in the following excerpt.

They have now no voice in the general Government of the Colony—except by the same expression of their opinion in conversation…

Now we will be frank with our foreign-born citizens. We don't believe that they will be allowed by law hereafter to vote or hold office unless they shall first have been naturalized.

Whether this bar to their political equality be morally wrong, we will not stop now to argue. Such appears to be the inexorable rule for the future; and such is the conservative rule of nations everywhere. Morality, intelligence, industry, skill, and property—manhood, wife, children—all go for nothing in the present state of international prejudice.

Our foreign-born population have, therefore, to bear the ills of an age of prejudice; or having cast their lot with us for life, they had better try to place themselves on an quality in all particulars with our natural born citizens. If the latter can be attained by a very simple process, if the alien can become to all intents and purposes a British subject, and in every way fare and share alike with the native-born subjects of the British nation, we maintain that it will be better for the resident alien than his present political isolation; and better far for the country to assimilate all its resident population, and have a homogeneous people, rather than have a large, moral, intelligent, industrious, and wealthy class of citizens who do not take part in all of the duties of a British Columbian.