COVID-19 Immigration Effects – April 2024 update

2024/06/28 Leave a comment

Highlights

Permanent Residents increased as did percentage of TR2PR to 62 percent of all Permanent Residents. 

Asylum claimants stable at about 16,000 per month.

Study permit applications flat following last month’s drop due to announced caps. Study permit web interests has also been declining on a year-over-year basis. 

While IMP numbers have declined, TFWP numbers have increased reflecting seasonal agriculture workers and those under LMIAs.

Slide 3 has the overall numbers and change.

https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/canadian-immigration-tracker-key-slides-april-2024pdf/269927425

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COVID-19 Immigration Effects – January 2024 update

2024/03/11 Leave a comment

Regular monthly data update.

Overall normal post December increase across programs with the exception of asylum claimants and students.

The percentage of former temporary residents transitioning to permanent residency was the highest to date, 78 percent of all Permanent Residents.

Asylum claimants continue at about 15,000 per month.

The impact of the cap on international students is not yet apparent in the February website data (possible leading indicator). February operational data on applications and permits issued will likely indicate impact.

Full 2023 settlement services now included, showing 53 percent increase compared to 2022.

Full 2023 citizenship application data now included, showing 20 percent increase compared to 2022, with the January number of new citizens increasing by a comparable on a year-over-year basis.   

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StatsCan: Use of Government COVID-19 Liquidity Support Programs by Immigrant-owned Businesses and Those Owned by Canadian-born Individuals

2024/03/08 Leave a comment

Of interest, with the same standard factors – gender, education, landing year and language skills – playing a role:

“Immigrant-owned businesses were more likely to be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic than other businesses, as they were more concentrated in industries requiring in-person contact and were smaller in scale. To support businesses affected by the pandemic, the Government of Canada launched various COVID-19 liquidity support programs, including the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS), the Canada Emergency Commercial Rent Assistance (CECRA), the Canada Emergency Rent Subsidy (CERS) and the Canada Emergency Business Account (CEBA). These programs were designed to help affected businesses by partially covering their main expenses, such as wages, rent and property expenses. This paper combines data from the Canadian Employer–Employee Dynamics Database with data from these four support programs to study the use of the programs by immigrant-owned businesses and to compare the results with those of businesses owned by Canadian-born individuals. The results indicate that businesses majority-owned by immigrants were more likely to receive the CEBA and the CECRA or the CERS and less likely to receive the CEWS than businesses owned by Canadian-born individuals after controlling for other factors. However, businesses majority-owned by immigrants received slightly higher dollar values than those owned by Canadian-born individuals, regardless of the program. Among immigrant-owned businesses, the characteristics of the owners, such as gender, education, landing year and language skills, played an important role in the use of the liquidity support programs. For example, businesses whose owners arrived in Canada more recently were less likely to receive the CEWS, and they received a lower dollar value. Businesses whose owners spoke neither English nor French were less likely to receive the CERS, the CECRA or the CEWS, and they received the lowest dollar value when all the programs were combined.”

Read the full report: https://doi.org/10.25318/11f0019m2024002-eng

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COVID-19 Immigration Effects – December 2023 update

2024/02/13 Leave a comment

Regular monthly data update.

Highlights on slide 3.

Canadian Immigration Tracker December 2023

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Canadian Immigration Tracker – November 2023 update

2024/01/13 Leave a comment

No major changes from October.

The one element to flag is the sharp increase in the number of asylum claimants, from a monthly average of about 10,000 January to June 2023 to about 15,000 July to November, largely driven by the easing of visa restrictions, with close to two-thirds of claims being “inland.” Given the large number of Mexican claimants, averaging more than 2,000 per month in 2023, there will continue to be calls to reimpose the visa requirement on Mexicans, as well as more general calls to restore the previous visa restrictions.

Highlights on slide 3.

https://www.slideshare.net/slideshows/canadian-immigration-tracker-key-slides-november-2023/265358086

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COVID-19 Immigration Effects – October 2023 update

2023/12/12 Leave a comment

Regular monthly data update.

Highlights:

Percentage of former temporary residents transitioning to permanent residency partially bouncing back after September (from 32 to 39 percent, 2023 January to August average 65 percent). Year to date: 404,000 of which 212,000 are former temporary residents.

Temporary residents (IMP): Year to date 757,000 compared to 484,000 in comparable 2022 period

Temporary residents (TFWP): Year to date 172,000 compared to 124,000 in comparable 2022 period

Asylum claimants continue to grow significantly, reflecting easing of visa requirements and other factors: Year to date 117,000 compared to 70,000 in comparable 2022 period. Unclear whether visa exemption for Mexico will remain tenable given sharp increase and rumblings in US border states regarding increasing arrivals from Canada: Year to date 22,000 compared to 12,000 in comparable 2022 period.

The number of new citizens remains strong, largely driven by virtual ceremonies being the default option (almost 90 percent of new citizens participated in virtual ceremonies). Year to date: 317,000 largely the same as the comparable 2022 period. 

Highlights on slide 3.

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COVID-19 Immigration Effects – September 2023 update

2023/11/15 Leave a comment

Regular monthly data update.

Of particular note this month is the drastic drop in the number of temporary residents transitioning to permanent residency and a an equally sharp decrease in the number admitted under IMP.

Asylum claimants continue to increase.

The number of new citizens rose sharply.

Highlights on slide 3.

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COVID-19 Immigration Effects – July 2023 update

2023/10/09 Leave a comment

Regular monthly data. Unfortunately, Permanent Residents source country not updated on open data and web data for study permits also not available.

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COVID-19 Immigration Effects – June 2023 update

2023/08/12 Leave a comment

Given IRCC delays in issuing citizenship data, have combined the May and June report.

At the half year mark, the government is on target to meet the levels plan for Permanent Residents (however misguided), with 263,000 to date or 57 percent of 465,000. The percentage of Temporary Residents transitioning to Permanent Residents averages about 50 percent for both time periods.

The number of temporary residents continues to grow, with 385,000 compared to 185,000 for the January-June 2002 period for the International Mobility Program and 114,000 compared to 75,000 for the Temporary Foreign Workers program.

The same pattern applies to International students: 242,000 compared to 202,000 for the January-June 2002 period.

For asylum claimants: 53,000 compared to 37,000.

Unlike the above, the number of new citizens has no impact on housing, healthcare and infrastructure as they are virtually all here in Canada. Interestingly, this is the only program that has seen a decline in the January-June periods: 177,000 compared to 184,000 although still historically strong.

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USA: A political gap in excess deaths widened after COVID-19 vaccines arrived, study says

2023/07/27 Leave a comment

Of note:

The pandemic inflicted higher rates of excess deaths on both Republicans and Democrats. But after COVID-19 vaccines arrived, Republican voters in Florida and Ohio died at a higher rate than their counterparts, according to a new study.

Researchers from Yale University who studied the pandemic’s effects on those two states say that from the pandemic’s start in March 2020 through December 2021, “excess mortality was significantly higher for Republican voters than Democratic voters after COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults, but not before.”

More specifically, the researchers say, their adjusted analysis found that “the excess death rate among Republican voters was 43% higher than the excess death rate among Democratic voters” after vaccine eligibility was opened.

The different rates “were concentrated in counties with lower vaccination rates, and primarily noted in voters residing in Ohio,” according to the study that was published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine on Monday.

It’s the latest research to suggest the perils of mixing partisan politics with medical advice and health policy.

How was the study performed?

Researchers analyzed data related to 538,159 people who died between Jan. 1, 2018, and Dec. 31, 2021, at ages 25 and over, compiling their political party affiliations based on records from 2017.

The study collected weekly death counts, breaking down the deceased’s party ties along with their county and age cohort. It used May 1, 2021, as a key dividing line because the date marks a month after all U.S. adults became eligible to receive shots of the COVID-19 vaccines.

The researchers estimated excess mortality based on how the overall rate of deaths during the pandemic compared to what would have been expected from historical, pre-pandemic trends.

Researchers saw a divide suddenly emerge

As they calculated excess death rate data for Florida and Ohio, the researchers found only small differences between Republican and Democratic voters in the first year of the pandemic, with both groups suffering similarly sharp rises in excess deaths that winter.

Things changed as the summer of 2021 approached. When coronavirus vaccine access widened, so did the excess death gap. In the researchers’ adjusted analysis of the period after April 1, 2021, they calculated Democratic voters’ excess death rate at 18.1, and Republicans’ at 25.8 — a 7.7 percentage-point difference equating to a 43% gap.

After the gap was established in the summer of 2021, it widened further in the fall, according to the study’s authors.

The study doesn’t provide all the answers

The researchers note that their study has several limitations, including the chance that political party affiliation “is a proxy for other risk factors,” such as income, health insurance status and chronic medical conditions, along with race and ethnicity.

The study focused only on registered Republicans and Democrats; independents were excluded. And because the researchers drilled into data in Florida and Ohio, they warn that their findings might not translate to other states.

The researchers’ data also did not specify a cause of death, and it accounts for some 83.5% of U.S. deaths, rather than the entire number. And because data about the vaccination status of each of the 538,159 people who died in the two states wasn’t available, researchers could only go as granular as the county level in assessing excess deaths and vaccination rates.

The study was funded by the Tobin Center for Economic Policy at Yale University and the Yale School of Public Health COVID-19 Rapid Response Research Fund.

New findings join other reviews of politics and the pandemic

In late 2021, an NPR analysis found that after May of that year — a timeframe that overlaps the vaccine availability cited in the new study — people in counties that voted strongly for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election were “nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19” as people in pro-Biden counties.

“An unvaccinated person is three times as likely to lean Republican as they are to lean Democrat,” as Liz Hamel, vice president of public opinion and survey research at the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, told NPR.

Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates. Misinformation is to blame

Even before vaccines were widely accessible, researchers were working to quantify the effects of vastly divergent COVID-19 policies across U.S. states.

A widely cited study from early 2021 found that in the early months of the pandemic’s official start date in March 2020, states with Republican governors saw lower COVID-19 case numbers and death rates than Democratic-led states. But the trend reversed around the middle of 2020, as Republican governors were less likely to institute controls such as stay-at-home orders and face mask requirements.

“Future policy decisions should be guided by public health considerations rather than by political ideology,” said the authors of that study, which was selected as the article of the year by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Source: A political gap in excess deaths widened after COVID-19 vaccines arrived, study says

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