ANOTHER JAPANESE INVASION
Notwithstanding all the agitation and legislation, the commission of enquiry and the promises of remedial measures against Asiatic immigration, hundreds of Japanese are reported to be taking passage from the Hawaiian Islands for this province. As it was last fall so it is now. There is nothing whatever to stop them from entering the country if they comply with the general immigration laws. Japan may prevent her subjects from leaving her shores but she has no control over those who have already [left] them, and there are no immigration regulations to keep them out of Canada. The Dominion Government, if we are correctly informed, may bring the Natal Act into operation by order-in-council, but as things stand at present every Japanese from Honolulu who is free of disease and can show twenty-five dollars in cash will be upheld by our own courts in his right to come in and possess the land. We have said again and again that an agreement with Japan would not meet the necessities of the case even were it rigidly enforced. The proof, however, has come rather earlier than we expected. We thought that the persons engaged in the work of flooding this province with Asiatic coolies would at least wait until the public excitement had died down under the influence of legislative pallatiqes, and both Parliament and the Assembly had dispersed, but it seems we had not gauged depths of their contempt for popular opinion in Canada nor taken accurate soundings of the estimation in which they held the power of British Columbia to obtain relief at the hands of its lawmakers. It is perhaps well, however, that they have been a little too bold and that the steamers from Honolulu will discharge they hordes on our quays while the Houses are actually sitting both at Victoria and Ottawa.
A glimpse of the problems for which Vancouver may one day have to find a solution was afforded in the incident which painfully marked the opening of the New Year, says the Vancouver World. In view of the serious nature of the charge against the Japanese who are now in custody in connection with the murderous attack on three uniformed firemen freedom of comment is not permissible. Be an accused man a Japanese, a negro or of any other nationality or race his right to a fair trial should not be prejudiced by the expression of views the publication of which is justifiable only after conviction. At the same time it might be pointed out without impropriety that the affray of the early hours of Wednesday morning has intensified on both sides the animosity between the great mass of white workers and the local Japanese colony and that we shall be very fortunate if accidental encounters are in no case productive of serious results. But Vancouver is not singular in this respect. The despatches bring word that all over the empire, wherever the Asiatic comes into economic competition with the white man, there is more or less fear of collisions which may lead to international complications. Even in England it is beginning to be suspected that the Japanese alliance will be much more easily preserved if the Japanese keep out of these British dominions which are regarded as the lands of the white man. Until lately we have been inclined to treat this as a British Columbia question or as a Canadian one. Signs are not wanting, however, that it is now to take rank as a great Imperial problem to be settled on Imperial lines. Hitherto immigration has been regulated on haphazard lines with consequent friction not only between the parts of the Empire and another. What is wanted is recognition of the principle that not all parts of the Empire are open to all the King’s subjects. In short, an Imperial code of laws should be formulated under which man’s lands such as Canada could be closed to oriental whether under British and [sic.] foreign government. Let representatives of Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and other self-governing colonies and also of India meet on an equal footing and draw up immigration edicts which, coming from such an authority, could be promulgated with less likelihood of irritating either the colored races under British jurisdiction or sensitive nations outside it. For the present, of course, we must have adequate protection from Ottawa, but until the sphere of the white man in the British dominions the world over is marked off, until the line is drawn which the Asiatic may not cross, the final solution of the problem is still to seek.
