immigrants in canada

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070130/statscan_immigrants_070130/20070130?hub=Canada

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.

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I also caught a story on the news this evening concerning this as well. It was about how immigrants have come from India and other countries to Canada looking for a new life and job only to find that no one will employ them and they can not file for unemployment insurance since they have not been in Canada long enough, and then fall to welfare. The problem is that, according to the lady at the employment agency that was interviewed '...once you are on welfare, it is hard to get out of it.' Now I wonder, does the welfare safety net that Canada have create a situation that calls to immigrants coming to a new country provide too much of a net so that people are not afraid to come to the country and try a new life? after all, if you were given the choice of going to one country and had to choose between two, where both had a difficult time finding work but one had a welfare social safety net that would catch you when you didnt find work and another wouldnt give a dime, which country would be your first choice? This then would cause problems with the social fabric since when a natural born citizen can get a job easily over an immigrant and then sees the immigrants on social safety nets there is a higher chance that a negative stereotype would be created in that the immigrants are lazy and coming to Canada only for a free hand out, not a job. Would the natural citizen see that the only reason the immigrants are on the safety net is because the natural citizens make it harder for the immigrants to get job. If the immigrant is given an equal chance to get the jobs on the market, and it is discovered that the immigrants have more education than the natural citizens and the natural citizens are reduced to the menial labour where the immigrants become the higher elite with the higher jobs, would the natural citizens start developing a stereotype that the immigrants come to Canada to 'steal away the jobs from natural citizens'? So, in the end, when it comes to immigration and natural citizens, it is a damned if you do, damned if you dont situation, dont you think?

So which is the lesser of all the evils before us? do we take away the social safety net set up to protect citizens down on their luck so that we dont attract immigrants to the country? do we keep the safety nets and create an equal country for employment, and possibly create a place where immigrants are flocking to? or, what would happen if we create the equal opportunity place but then make the entry restrictions so high that only a small handful of applicants can make it into the country? but, if we do that, then wont that create a harder place for the job market since the high elite immigrants that get in will be fighting the high elites of the natural citizenship for certain high paying jobs, and then again the natural citizens will complain about giving away high jobs to foreigners.

I guess there is no answer to this problem. We just have to deal with it all. Guess this place was a much better world when there was no country lines and all you needed to go from one place to another to live was a bundle of food, skin of water and a good horse or donkey for travel.