This presentation is an overview of Chinese immigrants in Newfoundland from 1895-1965. It focuses on St. John’s, where most Chinese settled. The Chinese were a ‘negatively privileged’ status group beneath the more powerful ‘Anglo-Irish’ settler population. A head tax in 1906 imposed a burden on new Chinese immigrants who were already marginalized in a low status occupation laundering clothes for the ‘Anglo-Irish’. It draws from interviews with 59 individuals who lived in the inner-city of St. John’s. Interactions with Chinese in laundries and restaurants provided evidence of friendliness, respect, sympathy and hostility. In some cases, Chinese married Newfoundland-born women who bore them children. Yet, they remained a foreign ‘Other’ without citizenship until Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949. It concludes by comparing the Chinese with Jews and Lebanese – Newfoundland's two other significant Pre-Confederation immigrant groups and provide suggestions for research on new racialized immigrants in Newfoundland and Labrador.
