Ulterior motives

　　居心叵測(陳繼龍 編譯)

　　Jun 22nd 2006 | OTTAWA

　　From The Economist print edition

　　IN ONE of the more shameful episodes of its past, Canada imposed a hefty head tax _______① all Chinese immigrants in 1885, then banned their entry altogether from 1923 to 1947. For the 15,000 or so Chinese men who had come to build Canada's transcontinental railway and the many more that came thereafter, it became first prohibitively expensive and then impossible to send for their wives and children.

　　1885年，加拿大開始向所有華人移民征收沉重的人頭稅，后來又在1923年至1947年間完全禁止華人移民入境，這是該國歷史上發(fā)生的較不體面的事件之一。對于到加拿大修建橫跨大陸鐵路(即太平洋鐵路)的大約15000名以及其后到來的更多中國男子而言，要想把他們的妻小接到加拿大，先是代價高得令其望而卻步，后來連一點可能也沒有了。

　　_______② decades, Canadians of Chinese descent have demanded an apology and redress[1]. Successive federal governments ignored them, apologising to various other groups, including 14,000 Japanese-Canadians, who also received C$21,000 each for their internment and property expropriation during the second world war. Fearing this might open the floodgates, a Liberal government declared in 1994 that the past was the past and that no further compensation would be forthcoming.

　　數(shù)十年來，加拿大華裔一直要求道歉和賠償，可繼任的各屆聯(lián)邦政府都置之不理，倒是向其它許多種族進行了道歉，其中包括14000名日裔加拿大人，并給每人發(fā)放了21000加元，作為對其在二戰(zhàn)時期身遭拘禁和財產(chǎn)被征用的賠償。由于擔(dān)心一發(fā)不可收拾，1994年自由黨政府宣布，過去歸過去，以后不會再有進一步的賠償了。