Immigrants no better off now, StatsCan reports
Updated Tue. Jan. 30 2007 10:05 AM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
The financial situation of new immigrants showed no improvement after the turn of the millennium although they have more education and skilled qualifications than a decade ago, Statistics Canada reports.
The report examines the economic welfare of immigrant families and individuals and assesses their financial situation since 2000, the extent of so-called “chronic” low income, and the impact of changes in education and skill classes on their economic well-being since 1993.
In 2002, low-income rates among immigrants during their first full year in Canada were 3.5 times higher than those of Canadian-born citizens. Two years later, the low-income rates were 3.2 times higher.
In this study, low income is defined as family income below 50 per cent of median income of the total population, adjusted for family size.
Statistics Canada says the low-income rates were higher than at any time during the 1990s, when they were around three times higher than rates for Canadian-born people.
“The increase in low income was concentrated among immigrants who had just recently entered the country, that is, they had been here only one or two years,” StatsCan says.
“This suggests they had more problems adjusting over the short-term during the years since 2000.”
One likely explanation may have been the slump in the technology sector after 2000, Statistics Canada says.
The proportion of recent immigrants in information technology and engineering occupations rose dramatically over the 1990s.
In 1993, the immigration-selection system was modified to attract more highly educated newcomers and those in the “skilled” classes.
As a result, the proportion of new immigrants aged 15 and older with university degrees rose from 17 per cent in 1992 to 45 per cent in 2004.
Furthermore, the share of newcomers with skilled qualifications increased from 29 per cent to 51 per cent.
The rapid increase throughout the 1990s in the share of arriving immigrants who were highly-educated and in the skilled economic class might have been expected to lower the chance of entering low-income, and increase the likelihood of leaving.
“This is because the more highly educated and “economic class” immigrants traditionally did better in the labour market,” the government agency says.
However, government researchers found the large increase in educated newcomers and a policy shift toward favouring skilled-class immigrants had only small impacts on their income levels.
“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 as measured by the probability of entry, exit and chronic rates,” Statistics Canada said.
In addition, the small advantage that the university-educated newcomers had over the high-school educated in the early 1990s had largely disappeared by 2000, as the number of highly educated immigrants rose.
Data for this study came from a database that combines the Longitudinal Administrative Database (LAD) and the Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB), and allows comparisons of known immigrants and other Canadians.
As a result, this study created a “comparison group” consisting of the Canadian-born, plus the immigrants who had been in Canada for more than 10 years.
The report compares results for recent immigrants to those of individuals in the comparison group of the same age.
