Brief History Of The Vietnam War Resistors

"American draft-dodgers and military deserters who sought refuge in Canada during the Vietnam War would ignite controversy among those seeking to immigrate to Canada, some of it provoked by the Canadian government’s initial refusal to admit those who could not prove that they had been discharged from [American] military service. This changed in 1968.[4] Draft-dodgers were usually college-educated sons of the middle class who could no longer defer induction into the Selective Service System. Deserters, on the other hand, were predominantly sons of the lower-income and working classes who had been inducted into the armed services directly from high school or who had volunteered, hoping to obtain a skill and broaden their limited horizons.[4]

Estimates vary greatly as to how many Americans settled in Canada for the specific reason of "draft dodging," or "evading conscription," as opposed to desertion, or other reasons. Canadian immigration statistics show that 20,000 to 30,000 draft-eligible American men came to Canada as immigrants during the Vietnam era. The BBC stated that "as many as 60,000 young American men dodged the draft."[5] Estimates of the total number of American citizens who moved to Canada due to their opposition to the war range from 50,000 to 125,000[6] This exodus was "the largest politically motivated migration from the United States since the United Empire Loyalists moved north to oppose the American Revolution."[7] Major communities of war resisters formed in Montreal, the Slocan Valley, British Columbia, and on Baldwin Street in Toronto, Ontario.

The influx of these young men, who (as mentioned earlier) were often well educated[4][9][10] and politically leftist, affected Canada's academic and cultural institutions, and Canadian society at large. These new arrivals tended to balance the "brain drain" that Canada had experienced. While some draft dodgers returned to the United States after an amnesty was declared in 1977 during the administration of Jimmy Carter, roughly half of them stayed in Canada."

Source Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_and_the_Vietnam_War

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