A new report on immigration outcomes questions Ottawa’s insistence on maintaining Canada’s high immigration levels despite a recession.
Bringing in a huge number of immigrants during an economic downturn could create an underclass of new Canadians caught up in adversity, said the study by the Institute for Research on Public Policy.
“During recessions, economic outcomes deteriorate more among recent immigrants than among the Canadian-born,” said the report, “Making it in Canada: Immigration Outcomes and Policies,” to be released Wednesday.
“It also helps prevent longer-run economic ‘scarring’ that can occur when new labour market entrants are unable to obtain jobs or are unable to practice their skills over a long period.”
In 2010, Canada accepted 280,636 permanent residents, the highest level in over 50 years.
The paper also raised concerns over Ottawa’s drastic shift to gear immigrant selection more toward short-term, narrowly defined labour market needs, because demand for specific occupations can change quickly with the business cycle.
For instance, during the IT boom in 1990s, Canada launched a special program to target newcomers with backgrounds in computer science and engineering. The group was the hardest hit in the 2000 IT bust.
While Ottawa’s recent policy changes — tightening requirements, prioritizing applications with arranged employments and expanding the temporary foreign workers program — can address skills shortages in the short term, it runs the risk of swinging too far off the balance, the report said.
“We are going in the right direction, but we may be moving a bit too far,” said McMaster University economics professor Arthur Sweetman, who co-wrote the report with Garnett Picot, former director-general of research at Statistics Canada.
“It’s not bad to be a bit short-term, but how short-term do you want it to be?” asked Sweetman.
It is too early to assess the impact of the recent changes, but Sweetman said Canada needs to balance immigrants’ short-term economic outcomes with their long-term success, reflected partially in the second-generation’s performance.
The report said children of immigrants are doing as well as, or better than, those of Canadian-born parents. However, second-generation members of a visible-minority group, on average, have higher unemployment rates and lower earnings than their white third-plus-generation counterparts.
University graduation rates among children of immigrants from:
Africa: 50.1%
Caribbean: 27.8%
Latin America: 23.3%
China: 62.4%
Philippines: 33%
India: 50.1%
West Asia, Middle East: 41.1%
Other Asia: 44.8%
United States: 35.1%
United Kingdom: 33.3%
Germany: 33%
Italy: 31.4%
Portugal: 17.4%
Netherlands: 30%
Other northern and Western Europe: 36.8%
Eastern Europe: 41.1%
Other Europe: 34.5%
Children of Canadian-born parents: 23.8%
Source: Making It in Canada: Immigration Outcomes and Policies
