As you asked me to keep in touch with developments related to the position of Asiatics in this country, you may wish to have a brief report on the developments last week in the Cabinet committees on Immigration and on the Japanese, which I attended.

The committee on Immigration decided to recommend to Cabinet that the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 be repealed at the forthcoming session and that provisions be made by Order in Council under the Immigration Act to enable the wives and unmarried children under 18 years of age of Asiatics who are Canadian citizens to be admitted to Canada. It is felt that these two steps will substantially meet the complaints with regard to discrimination for the time being.

With the repeal of the Chinese Immigration Act, an important problem of administration arises which will require further action. This problem is connected with the difficulty of identifying Chinese persons so as to be sure of the actual identity of people admitted to Canada. Under the present Act, registration of outgoing Chinese is required, and they cannot return if tney have not so registered. The Immigration Branch feels that this registration is essential to a successful control policy. In order to provide for registration without specific discrimination, the committee decided to recommend that an Order in Council be passed under the general Immigration Act requiring all persons, other than Canadian citizens, who are resident in Canada to register before leaving Canada, if they wish to return. A second Order in Council, it was felt, should then be passed exempting from the provisions of the above such nationalities as provide no complications with regard to identity. The probable result would be to exempt all persons from registration, except Asiatics, but the above method would enable it to be done in a less discriminatory manner than at present.

With regard to the Japanese problem,' the committee decided to recommend that there should be no deportations and that the Orders in Council of December 1945, which were recently before the courts, should be allowed to lapse. With regard to the Japanese remaining in Canada, the committee is recommending that the present Order in Council restricting the movement of Japanese persons should be retained in effect along with the few other emergency controls which will be found necessary, such as rent control, etc. It is felt that the control of movement is needed for a time to prevent a new concentration of the Japanese in. British Columbia.

I think that the above recommendations, if approved, should go a long way toward eliminating the current criticisms of the government position.

R.G. R[OBERTSON]