Pursuant to instructions I detailed a corps of well-trained inspectors and interpreters to duty at Winnipeg, Manitoba, and at the same time, through the influence of the Bureau, obtained the acquiescence of the parties of the second part (to wit, certain Canadian transportation companies) to Department Circular 97, dated November 1, 1901, to the establishment of a board of special inquiry at Winnipeg.
The Bureau will have some approximate idea of the importance of this change when viewing it in the light of the following figures:
Since the date of the opening of the Winnipeg office (February 14, 1903) no less than 2,157 immigrants have been examined by the board of special inquiry, and certificates of admission have been issued to 1,633, while the surprising number of 524[[2]] have been rejected for the following causes:
[2]. Including Pembina and Portal.
| Trachoma | 171 |
| Minors dependent on above | 128 |
| Likely to become public charge | 171 |
| Contract laborers | 51 |
| Measles | 3 |
| ______ | |
| Total | 524 |
The total amount of head tax collected on account of these immigrants is $3,729, not a dollar of which would have been collected had this important change not been made; nor would a single person in the list of objectionables have been denied admission to the United States, but would have crossed the frontier without let or hindrance, as thousands of their equally objectionable kind had been doing for an indefinite period of time.
The work of the board of special inquiry at Winnipeg had scarcely commenced when we discovered that the objectionable aliens whose access to the United States the Montreal office was established to prevent were going still farther westward, and rejections are now not at all uncommon as far west as the borders of Montana, Idaho, and Washington.
The Bureau saw fit, on March 26, 1903, to promote the Montreal office from a special inspectorship to a commissionership, and to extend its jurisdiction to the Atlantic ports, Halifax, N. S.; St. John, N. B.; and Quebec, Que.