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Introduction

 

On the 23^rd of December 1901, the Australian government, with bipartisan support[1], assented to the Immigration Restriction Act (featured below), an official embodiment of the spirit of the White Australia Policy. The overarching aim of the Immigration Restriction Act was to combat non-white immigration into Australia, with a particular concern regarding Asian immigration.

 The implementation of this Act coincided with the tail end of an increase in Syrian* immigrants in Australia. Syrians were drawn away from the Syria/Lebanon area in the last few decades of the 19^th century due to worsening economic circumstances caused by a lax Ottoman economic policy, religious persecution of Christians and the lure of tales of success in the new world[2]. It is estimated that the population of Mount Lebanon decreased by one quarter in the early 20^th century[3], however this fact is not represented in the numbers of Syrian migrants in Australia; it is assumed that this is due to the ‘success’ of the White Australia Policy.

Initially Syrians were classified as an Asian race due to their geographical location; this prohibited them from pension benefits, voting, and gaining citizenship[4]. However, there was continued confusion within the Department of External Affairs regarding how to classify Syrian immigrants as they were seen to be racially and culturally closer to Europeans than to Asians[5]. This confusion stemmed from three characteristics of the Syrian immigrant population; their paleness of skin, the relatively even balance of the sexes in incoming immigrants, and their religion, Christianity. Many Syrians could not be racially distinguished from Greek and Turkish immigrants unless they identified themselves as Syrian, and authorities differed in whether they categorized Syrians as coloured or not[6]. The relatively balanced gender ratio and the fact that Syrians tended to migrate in family groups also separated them from other Asian races. The larger proportion of women was often interpreted as meaning that Syrian men would be less likely to work for lower wages as they had a family to support, less likely to dilute the white population pool with intermarriage and less likely to need to bring families out to Australia if they gained citizenship. The vast majority of Syrian immigrants in the late 19^th, early 20^th century were Christian, the religion of the host population, which also made them more appealing immigrants than their ‘Asian’ counterparts[7].

*NOTE: The majority of the ‘Syrian’ immigrant population came from Mount Lebanon, now known as the republic of Lebanon. However, given the classification used during this time period on immigration forms, etc. was Syrian, that classification shall be used for the purposes of this discussion. It is important to consider though that this classification was (and is) often inaccurate.