Recent immigrants not wealthier despite education: StatsCan
Last Updated: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 | 3:08 PM ET
CBC News
Income levels of new Canadian immigrants did not improve after 2000 even though they were better educated and more skilled than people coming to the country a decade earlier, Statistics Canada reported Tuesday.
A report by the federal agency says education and skill level did not make a difference in income because of the state of the economy.
Garnett Picot, a Statistics Canada analyst, said the agency believes the downturn suffered by the information technology industry at the beginning of the decade is responsible for the low income levels.
“The immigration system was quite successful in bringing in many more engineers and information technology workers than had been the case prior to that. And that continued into the early 2000s, and these people may have got caught up in the economic downturn,” he told CBC News.
Titled “Chronic low income and low-income dynamics among recent immigrants,” it examines the economic welfare of immigrant families and individuals. It also assesses their economic situation since 2000, the extent of chronic low income, and the impact of changes in education and skill classes on their economic well-being since 1993.
In 2002, the report said, low-income rates among immigrants during their first full year in Canada were 3.5 times higher than those of Canadian-born residents. By 2004, they had edged down to 3.2 times higher.
But for nearly one in five recent immigrants, the experience of low income was chronic, the report said.
Picot said low income, for the purposes of the study, has been defined as a family of four that earns less than $26,800 a year.
The report found the large increase in education of new immigrants and a policy shift that prefers the skilled class immigrant had only a small impact on improving new immigrant income levels.
In 1993, the federal government changed its selection system to attract more highly educated and skilled immigrants.
Subsequently, the proportion of new immigrants with university degrees rose to 45 per cent in 2004 from 17 per cent in 1992.
But that change, according to the report, did not translate into higher incomes, because skilled class new immigrants were actually more likely to begin life in Canada with low incomes.
Surviving 1st year a key
The report, however, was not all bad news.
“The probability of entering a period of low income was very high for immigrants during their first year in Canada. It ranged from 34 per cent to 46 per cent depending upon their year of arrival,” it said. “However, if immigrants did not enter a period of low income during their first year, the likelihood of that happening fell substantially to 10 per cent or less for subsequent years in Canada.
“The result was that for immigrants who arrived during the early 1990s, about 65 per cent entered low income at some time during their first 10 years in Canada. Of these, two-thirds did so during their first year.”
Calls for more government services
Charon Gill, CEO of the Progressive Intercultural Communites Services Society in Vancouver, said a contributing factor to low immigrant incomes is a lack of government services to help them use their skills.
“Immigrants come here. They feel they’re being dumped. They’re being ignored. They’re being left out on their own.”
Gill said many immigrants who arrive in Canada expect to use their education to begin a career, but he said they soon find out they need to upgrade to use those skills.
If they are not able to do so, they end up in low-wage jobs, he said.
According to the report, nearly one in five of recent immigrants who arrived between 1992 and 2000 were at a low income at least four years during their first five years in Canada. The rate was more than twice the corresponding rate of around eight per cent among people born in Canada.
For the group that arrived in 1993, the five-year chronic low-income rate was 20.5 per cent. For those who arrived in 2000, it had declined to 16.2 per cent as the economy improved.
The report said the rate declined because of improving economic conditions, not because of the education and skill levels of the immigrants.
“Overall, the large rise in educational attainment of entering immigrants and the shift to the skilled class immigrant had only a very small effect on poverty outcomes…,” the report said.
