A new study has found that immigrants arriving through the skilled worker and refugee streams are most likely to have a positive impact on the Canadian economy.
The study was part of a report conducted and released by the Institute for Research on Public Policy. The findings recommend that the federal government focus more on these two categories of immigration – particularly in times of recession when immigrants are most likely the first to be laid off.
The study was conducted over 10 years across several groups of immigrants arriving in Canada between 1982 and 1994. The findings showed a consistent correlation between category of immigration and income level.
“Skill-assessed immigrants, people who go through the point system, consistently do better in terms of higher earning levels than other arriving immigrants – 35 per cent better for men and 56 per cent for women,” said study co-author Charles Beach, adding that refugees ranked highest in earning growth rates.
The report was critical of recent government policies on immigration, including the decision to limit the skilled worker category to only 29 occupations, and introducing a cap on the number of applications accepted each year. At the same time, levels of temporary workers and provincial nominees are increasing, which are generally accepting lower-skilled workers.
“There has been a huge growth in the Provincial Nominee Program – while that does a better job of getting people to regions and provinces and so on, the fact is, more than half of those people who come in are roughly low-skilled and the point of our study means, on average, they don’t do as well as people with more skills,” said Beach.
Source: Ottawa Citizen