Alvin Hamm

Alvin Hamm joined the Department of Manpower and Immigration in 1968 and was with that department and its successor, Employment and Immigration Canada, until 1979.

The interview was edited for clarity.

Interviewer: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Your name, how you got involved in immigration and settlement, and the years during which you worked in this field?

Alvin Hamm: I am Alvin Hamm, and I joined the Department of Manpower and Immigration on January 2, 1968. I was with Manpower and Immigration, or Employment and Immigration as it was subsequently called, until early 1979.

I only started working for the Immigration side of the department, and specifically, the Immigration Settlement section, in March of 1979. I did have one short period of time in 1972 when I was based at the Canada Manpower Center in Vancouver, where I was involved from an employment angle with the Ugandan Refugee movement. I know from Mike Malloy, a senior official that I had some reason to exchange emails with earlier this year. At that time the focus was on the 50 Year Anniversary of the Ugandan Refugee Movement, and because I had played a role at that point from the Manpower side of the department.

As I said earlier, I only actually worked for several months in an area that was connected and associated with the [Ugandan Asian] refugee movement in 1972. So, let me just sort of continue on, if you’d like, with what my role was [in 1979].

I worked with the immigration Settlement department—this was at the B.C. Yukon Regional office in Vancouver—from March 1979 to May 2002, when I retired. My title during that time was ‘Program Specialist, Settlement’. I was responsible under the direction of my boss—who had various titles over that 22-year period, but he was essentially the manager of immigration recruitment and selection and settlement.

There were several managers, but he was very much involved. We were responsible, he and I, for overseeing the refugee program—and the settlement program connected to it—for that time period for the B.C./Yukon region. And I want to add that there was one big section of the settlement and refugee program. That was actually delivered at the field level by Canada manpower Centers or ones that subsequently became Canada Employment centers in the B.C. /Yukon Region.

I had limited contact with incoming refugees during that time period—I worked mostly with our Manpower and Immigration and Employment and Immigration staff during that time to help direct and assist them with their delivery of the different programs that were connected to the federal department.

Interviewer: What sorts of settlement programs, or services were available for new immigrants and refugees?

Alvin Hamm: Well, I think one of the very biggest—well, there was a whole array of different programs, but let’s start with the employment side first of all.

There was a program called the Adjustment Assistance Program, and I believe it still exists [its successor is the Resettlement Assistance Program, established in 1998.]. I think this program actually goes back to the 1960s. That was the program that we used to provide financial assistance for incoming refugees from throughout the world.

This relates more specifically to the segment of refugees referred to as ‘government-assisted refugees’. There was another section involved that commenced in about, I would say, 1976—it was introduced by the department during that time—that was responsible for private sponsorship of refugees. So there was provision already, then, as there is now, for the sponsorship by groups of five people, or by other institutionalized groups—I’m referring to existing entities, such as the Mennonite Central Committee and the United Church of Canada, who could also sponsor individual refugees or refugee families.

From our end, from the Canada end of this program, the program delivery was from Canada Immigration Centers—field offices, as opposed to the Canada Employment Center field offices who delivered the Adjustment Assistance Program, so the Refugee Sponsorship Program was a second program we had that was very big—it was a major program.

Interviewer: Were there any policy or institutional changes that occurred during your time in immigration that you recall?

Alvin Hamm: Let me refer to a third program that was being delivered, and this was delivered by Canada Immigration centers, and that was the Immigration Settlement and Adaptation Program (ISAP). I know you’re interested in this because you just alluded to it earlier. This program was used by the Government of Canada to provide funding to non-governmental organizations, mostly non-profit organizations, to provide various programs to help immigrants, including refugees, with their settlement in Canada with their adjustment to Canada—in terms of orientation programs, interpreter services and helping them to find work.

So it was a significant program, and this is where we were involved and intersecting with the non-government sector because we were relying on them to do the major part of the non-financial assistance that refugee newcomers need when they first arrive, so they can begin their successful settlement in their new country.

Interviewer: So essentially, you provided resources and funding to NGOs?

Alvin Hamm: Yes, and the resources consisted largely of funding. Of course, we would also help them with information resources, to let them know who was coming in.

I wasn’t so much involved with making these decisions, but over this 22-year period we had many different refugee movements from different countries. We had special programs. The Immigration Act and Regulations had general provisions for enabling the incoming Government Assisted Refugee movements and enabling the Private Sponsorship Program, that were valid during that whole 22-year period. But there were often, during this time, different events in the world that resulted in Canada deciding to focus on special situations where there were refugee crises developing—where refugees were fleeing their countries and needing to resettle in resettlement countries like Canada.

For example, when I started in 1979, the biggest focus by far was on the Vietnamese refugee movement. There was actually an earlier refugee movement from 1975 to 1976, and then there was this new one that I got involved with beginning in 1978, and that was the major focus of the department for several years.

There were refugees coming in from other countries, too, but the vast majority were from Vietnam, and a smaller number of what we call the Indochinese refugee movement, which consisted of three source countries: Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. So, there were different movements, and as time went on, we focused on other areas, and we had set up special programs to make it easier—for example, with the Indo-Chinese refugee movement, it wasn’t limited to people who met Canada’s [definition of a refugee]. The Immigration Act defined who was eligible to be categorized as a convention refugee. But over and above that, the department established certain ‘designated classes’.

These immigration categories, with codes such as DC 1 or DC 3, made it easier for immigration officers abroad to select suitable people who met the [designated class] definition. What it meant or enabled us to do, was to identify and accept Indochinese refugees, who did not technically meet the convention refugee definition. There wasn’t any sort of effort required by an immigration officer abroad in deciding whether a person met the convention refugee definition. All they had to do was read the regulations for the designated class of Indochinese refugees and say, “Oh well, that’s easy. Yeah, this family qualifies,” and it was a shortcut means of enabling large massive movements of people without [having to carry out individual refugee determinations]. Some of them technically would not have met the definition of a convention refugees.

I’m sort of moving into an area that’s more the national headquarters’ responsibility—they were the ones that decided, passed by cabinet order I guess, to enable the government to establish these designated classes, that enabled us to bring in these massive numbers of people at times.

Interviewer: So, going back to the funding, was there a lack of funding, or was there any difficulty getting the funding to the NGOs?

Alvin Hamm: Well, I would say the program worked. I would say that the NGOs probably would have wanted more money. We were often their primary source, but we were not their only source of funding—they often received some funding from the provincial governments across Canada—in my case, British Columbia.

But they probably would have, if you asked them, they would say, “Well, we could have done more”. They would probably say that if “we had had more funding from you,” but in terms of meeting our own eligibility criteria, it wasn’t too onerous for them, I don’t think. We would only pay them for certain types of services and for certain types of clients they served.

We had an interesting rule which stated that—and this was based on federal regulations and guidelines—we had a special rule that stated that we would only provide services to those who had been in Canada for up to three years. If you were beyond three years, you were no longer eligible. There applied to refugees and other immigrants who needed eligible settlement services. If they had been in the country beyond three years, the NGOs could no longer claim payment for those services. They had to obtain the funds utilized in serving those type of refugees from other sources.

My recollection is that the reason three years was used is that an immigrant had to be in Canada for three years before they could apply to become a Canadian citizen. So that’s where I think that three-year rule came from. In other words, even if someone hadn’t become a Canadian citizen but was in their fourth year, I believe he was no longer eligible to get [settlement] services that were funded by the federal government.

Oh, yes—There was another federal government department that was also involved with funding, and they provided at least some of the funding for some of the services beyond three years—and this department has gone through vast changes. This is the secretary of state or department responsible for multiculturalism or heritage—that department also was involved in funding these same NGOs, and others.

Interviewer: So you mentioned new immigrants and refugees had up to three years to receive NGO services, what are your opinions on this policy, was it harmful in any way?

Alvin Hamm: I think that probably that was a rather arbitrary and bureaucratic restriction, but I think most NGOs nevertheless continued to provide services to those who were in their fourth year or could be even ten years.

Tthey provide services to all immigrants, not just refugee immigrants. And I don’t know over the years what proportion of those were refugees, I’m not sure. I think there were some years where probably the majority of their clients were refugee immigrants. But there are many other immigrants who are in Canada for 10, 20 years, and who haven’t really undergone a full settlement process and they are still, perhaps, unable to speak English or French and so forth. They might come into an NGO office and request services.

I should mention one major item that was funded under the Immigration Settlement and Adaptation Program, and that was English language training.

Interviewer: How were immigration and settlement initiatives passed down the line of command?

Alvin Hamm: There was a settlement branch at National Headquarters in Ottawa, and our instructions came from them for B.C / Yukon Territory.

And we, in turn, at regional headquarters in Vancouver, would provide those instructions to the field offices—the Canada Employment Centers and the Canada Immigration Centers—who would do much of that direct program delivery.

I was involved in the Immigration Settlement and Adaptation Program—I delivered that directly. And I was, for a long time, the only person doing it. There were some other people involved at times, but I was doing that throughout that whole 22-year period.

But you asked about major changes—one major change was in the Immigration Settlement and Adaptation Program. There was a time period, starting in about 1999 as a sort of an approximation, in many provinces, including British Columbia, whereby the provincial government took over most of the funding that was provided to NGOs. [British Columbia signed a five-year agreement in 1998, thereby assuming full responsibility for designing and delivering settlement programs for newcomers. Responsibility reverted to the federal government in 2013] So, we continued to have the Immigration Settlement Adaptation Program available but for a much smaller number of projects per year than up to that point.

Subsequent to my retirement, the provincial government gave up the delivery of this funding service and gave it back to the federal government, or the federal government announced that it was taking it over again. So, there was that time period where the provincial government provided most of the kind of funding that I was describing under this Immigration Settlement and Adaptation Program.

So that was a major change that occurred, and I should also add that during that time when the provincial government was delivering the funding, the federal government was providing lump sum payments to the provinces every year to fund most of that program delivery in British Columbia.

Interviewer: Why do you think the provincial government relinquished that responsibility?

Alvin Hamm: Well, I guess the first question would be why did we agree to transfer responsibility to the provincial government?

I don’t know. I actually don’t know if there was a good reason. I mean, I guess always the argument for decentralization is that local governments know more, know better than what national headquarters in Ottawa thinks is suitable for the provision of programs and services, so that would be theoretically what an academic would say. That’s why governments do that in a federal government where there’s a federal system.

But I don’t know if that might have been the argument or the rationale that was used at the time. Now why we took it back, this is subsequent to after I retired, I don’t know other than that maybe the federal government was saying, “Well, since we established immigration and policy, we announce every year how many people were going to bring into Canada and how many of those will be… What the number of refugees will be, etc, since it’s our responsibility to establish that policy, well then maybe it’s also one of our department’s responsibility to actually deal with the impact of such decisions, which is then you know that these immigrants require services.”

Interviewer: How much liberty did you have when looking for solutions to individual or systemic problems?

Alvin Hamm: If you were to ask me “what are some of your regrets in your career with the government?”, I think that we were awfully bureaucratic.

“These are the rules”. This is what the regulations—written by cabinets and senior bureaucrats—say as to what services are eligible and whom we can fund, for example, and they also write the guidelines so that first of all you have the Immigration Act, and then you have the applicable regulations, and then you have the national guidelines.

This is all done by Ottawa, at National Headquarters. So, we cannot go contrary to those regulations, to those guidelines. We would always consult—it would be a consultative process between us at the regional headquarters and national headquarters. There was continual consultation, by email or by phone calls.

And just to give you a sense of the process at regional headquarters—every year, once a year, we met; a board was established. The board consisted of a mix of people, including people from the department. My manager and I would sit on this board—I would do all the field work and gather information on the applications every year. Then, once a year, prior to the beginning of the fiscal year, we would meet others—there would be people from the department responsible for multiculturalism, as well as from the provincial government, who we would ask to sit down and help us with our decision-making.

Even before 1999, let’s say there would still be the provincial government, still had certain Interests in certain things that they added to, you know, the government programs that are available to help immigrants and refugees. And so, but then the final decision would really be my manager, you know, the manager of settlement and other immigration programs. He would make the final decision, and of course, his boss, the Director of Immigration for B.C and Yukon, would be there to back him up, should there be any questioning of my manager’s decision-making.

Interviewer: What would you say was the biggest issue in immigration during this time period discussed, or perhaps did you encounter any obstacles?

Alvin Hamm: That’s a very good question—actually, I don’t know how to answer that. Certainly, the programs, the services that were directed by our staff, our personnel, and by NGOs, were never perfect. There were issues that were encountered—there were some incoming refugee groups, people from specific countries, or immigrants and refugee movements, who did not settle as well as others.

And that would sometimes just be a function, a pure function of some of the people our department selected to come to Canada. You know, our immigration officers, abroad, who would interview these refugees, there were some that were marginal. They were people who were in serious need of resettlement in a country like Canada, and so we accepted them, but they didn’t have the background to easily settle into Canada and become self-supporting.

Not needing government assistance, for example. There were some that seem to end up—it would be a minority for sure—being chronic welfare recipients. There would be a minority of such people on certain refugee movements, who just didn’t have the wherewithal, the background, the education, employment experience, whatever it might be.

They were essentially unskilled—people who had difficulty finding work and so forth. So, in some cases, I don’t think it was an inadequacy of our programs and services. It was just a function of the fact that these people had difficulty adjusting to our type of society and becoming self-supporting. That’s one issue, I guess.

Interviewer: Thank you! What are your current opinions on the changes that have been made to policy development, settlement and immigration?

Alvin Hamm: Well, in terms of policy development, that was the responsibility of our National Headquarters. Certainly, my colleagues at National Headquarters (immigration or the settlement branch) and I were in communication continually over the years concerning different matters of program delivery. It could very well be that we would reference different issues that we had, that NGOs for instance, were bringing to our attention, that we felt, maybe our programs weren’t responding to effectively.

And so, yeah, that I’m sure that occurred. But now, in terms of identifying those specifically, well, I can think of one; just as an issue, one of the programs that we funded, starting probably in the 1990s, is we funded not just NGOs that were delivering services at the point where the refugees had moved to Canada. You know Vancouver, Kamloops, B.C and Victoria, etc. There was an inadequacy of NGOs at airports of reception, so when refugees come in, they enter the country, usually almost always by flight, you know, from other countries, and so many of these, for example, would arrive at the Vancouver International Airport, and we had a Canada immigration center there that would be there to process our immigration papers, and so forth, and then send them on their way to wherever they were going to be living.

Initially, they would stay in; usually, the refugees would stay in a reception house. While the ones destined for Vancouver would stay in the reception House, operated by an NGO, so I’ll have to talk about that too in Vancouver. So I guess what I’m saying is we could see that more and more, we needed an NGO to function at the airport at the Vancouver International Airport, to provide certain services that were delivered by various people but primarily immigration officers, you know, in the 80s and early 90s, it was only then maybe beginning in the 1990s, that national headquarters helped us realize that we need to sort of strengthen the program delivery that was needed at the airport for airport reception services, for example, the refugees often did have winter clothing so, particularly in winter time we would purchase clothing ahead of time under the Adjustment Assistance Program and then have it available in various sizes for men, and women, and children, to outfit them, even before they were moved to their final destination.

But there was also a need for other types of basic services, information services, especially for refugees, that they would benefit from by having it right at the point where they first arrive at the airport. So, we funded an NGO in Vancouver to… so at the beginning of this new initiative, by the department, that was initiated by national headquarters. We may have been involved in advising national headquarters that, hey, this is an area that really needs strengthening. And so that is how I guess the program changed, the immigration settlement program changed, when we began funding this new service, so I guess that’s sort of an example of that.

Interviewer: Are there any moments that stand out during your time working in immigration and settlement?

Alvin Hamm: Oh, well, I mean, certainly, because I was new to Canada’s immigration program; I mean, I had some exposure in 1972 when the Ugandan refugees came in because I was involved with interviewing them for employment purposes. I had more limited experience, so when I transferred from the employment division to the immigration division, specifically the settlement section, in 1979, we were in the midst of this massive Indo-Chinese refugee program, and that certainly stands out because it was a massive undertaking, and even at the B.C. Yukon region Level.

You know, I mean, we had Canada immigration centers, we had Canada employment centers, so that’s the province, and Yukon territory, you know, involved in delivering, so they had to be trained, staff had to be trained to learn how to deliver these different programs that I’m talking about all three programs that I mentioned so far, the Refugee Sponsorship Program, the Adjustment Assistance Program, and the Immigration Settlement and Adaptation program.

So these people had to be trained. And so we were involved in training our own staff, and since it was a new thing, especially the Adjustment Assistance program, for example, had been delivered in Vancouver already for a number of years, but there was a massive increase in refugees, coming even here, but the staff, out in other sections of the province, and Yukon had no experience with this, and it was entirely new to them, dealing with this massive sudden influx of newcomers.

So yeah, it was that training, basically learning the new program and how to deliver the new program and learning about how to interact with the newcomers. And I’ll just again mention this on the side, and if you want to pursue it, that’s fine. The department decided in the 1990s for the delivery of all their programs, especially the immigration division, that immigration staff, especially officers, needed to be given cross-cultural training on how to interact with people of different cultures. And so, I became an instructor; I was one of four instructors, and I was a lead instructor. There was an initiative in the 1990s where we delivered, I don’t know, 10-15 Courses over and over again, a three-day course where we provided cross-cultural training to our staff. And I really had the privilege; it was one of my favourite career experiences. And you know, I was involved in this, and I really enjoyed it very much.

Interviewer: What did the cultural training include?

Alvin Hamm: Let me see if I can recall different segments of the program. There were, in fact, three or four of us who would deliver different components of that three-day course. There was a history of immigration to Canada of immigration policy and delivery in Canada, going way back hundreds of years even to the present.

Then there would be some focus on what were our current programs and services. So that would be one component, and I was the one who always delivered that. There was another sort of general program component of the course, that was essentially, I don’t know if I’ve got the title right, but it was essentially about prejudice and discrimination.

And you know, what do we know, even from an academic standpoint? How are prejudice and discrimination defined? What are examples of them? And how do we change our mindsets, so we do not, you know, deliver services with prejudice and discrimination? Then there were three different parts, at least three. I probably am missing something here, but where we focused on what are some of the specific cultural characteristics of the different people that are coming to Canada.

This was broad; it was not just focused on refugees. But I know we had one component on Vietnamese refugees, another on Chinese immigrants, another on immigrants from India, or you know whose origins are in India, and I guess that would be the whole, sort of South Asian continent, but sort of a focus I think, to some degree on Sikh immigrants, because in terms of immigrants, from India, Sikhs from Punjab are probably the largest number, although we get immigrants from all parts of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. So, those are some; I’m probably missing one component or one part of the course or segment of the course.

Interviewer: Do you recall when the cultural training was implemented?

Alvin Hamm: Yeah, it was in the 1990s, and it was, by the way, across Canada, a program undertaken by our department. I was the only person at that time as the lead instructor who attended a national headquarters training program.

So, I think it was settlement branch that organized the training of representatives, from each province, from each region, of immigration staff like myself. And then we had a subsequent, where the lead person for this, Steven Neman, came over and did a training program for I think for me, and my three co-delivers you know, instructors. I think we actually might have; he might have done a test case where Steven sort of oversaw the delivery of the first course to immigration staff; I can’t remember it was something like that,

Interviewer: Do you have any final thoughts you want to share with us?

Alvin Hamm: Well, I thought I would just tell you about my involvement in 1972; I don’t know whether you’ve heard of the Ugandan Refugee movement, but these were people that Canada took who actually were not the original natives of Uganda, they were people that were from India originally, who during the British Colonial era were moved as I don’t know, I think as guest workers, or as workers so that there were a considerable number of immigrants, that for example, that Canada brought to Africa, they were primarily, I think, they were primarily from Gujarat they may have come from other States in India, and a good Segment of them were Ismaili Muslims.

And during the Government of Uganda, run by someone called Idi Amin, he decided that he wanted to get rid of this population, this minority population in Uganda, so he said I’m kicking these people out or that it’s now Ugandan Government policy, that these people are now, persona non grata, I’m just using that as my way of describing it, and you know, they have to move, they have to move out of Uganda. There were other Indian immigrants of this nature in places like Tanzania and Kenya, and maybe a few of the other East African countries, so Canada sent in immigration officers.

We even had an NGO representative come from Vancouver, who flew to Kampala, the capital of Uganda, and interviewed these people to accept them. So they were mostly not technically refugees as yet, because they hadn’t actually left their country; I mean, technically, you can only be a convention refugee after you have left your country, you’ve already temporarily settled in, let’s say, refugee camps outside of Uganda for instance, and then at that point, you are technically a convention refugee, anyway we brought in, and I think these people were largely still in Uganda, and we flew them to Canada, thousands of them, and a certain segment of them, I don’t know what percentage, came to Vancouver and they were taken, and the individuals were given adjustment assistance program upon arrival, you know, financial assistance and assistance with finding accommodations, and so forth.

And then, one of the things that they would do is they would go to their local Canada Manpower Center to register for employment. So many of them… I was working in one of the Canada Manpower centers in Vancouver, and at that time, there were only two Canada Manpower Centers in the City of Vancouver; the government had divided up all the workers, you could put it that way, in Vancouver by occupation.

And so the Canada manpower center where I was working was responsible for all professional and clerical and, you know, technical occupations. And the other manpower center was responsible, for example, the trades and unskilled workers and semi-skilled trades, like truck drivers, and so forth. So I was working in the clerical section, where we interviewed clerical clients, who were unemployed mostly, so a lot of these newly arrived Ugandan refugees could largely be categorized as clerical workers, clerks, clerk typists, secretaries and book-keepers, you know, that kind of thing.

So I was one of several Manpower consellors, that was my title at that time, who was responsible for interviewing these people, and taking their application for employment with the government, not for jobs with the government so much, but we would all have employers phoning in and requesting referrals for, let’s say, a secretary job, and then it would be my responsibility to look through my index list of a person they wanted, and see if I can identify potentially eligible clients, and then call them up, after they have registered with us, and then refer them to the employer, so that was the idea.

So anyway, that was my experience, and I know at the time that there was another section of our offices that was responsible for providing adjustment assistance, so that was in 1972, about seven years before I actually started working for immigration settlement programs, so that was kind of a little highlight in the sense of being you know my earliest involvement with refugees.

Interviewer: Well, thank you, so much. Alvin, I appreciate your time.