Ulterior motives

　　居心叵测(陈继龙 编译)

　　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，加拿大开始向所有华人移民征收沉重的人头税，后来又在1923年至1947年间完全禁止华人移民入境，这是该国历史上发生的较不体面的事件之一。对于到加拿大修建横跨大陆铁路(即太平洋铁路)的大约15000名以及其后到来的更多中国男子而言，要想把他们的妻小接到加拿大，先是代价高得令其望而却步，后来连一点可能也没有了。

　　_______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.

　　数十年来，加拿大华裔一直要求道歉和赔偿，可继任的各届联邦政府都置之不理，倒是向其它许多种族进行了道歉，其中包括14000名日裔加拿大人，并给每人发放了21000加元，作为对其在二战时期身遭拘禁和财产被征用的赔偿。由于担心一发不可收拾，1994年自由党政府宣布，过去归过去，以后不会再有进一步的赔偿了。