Canada pays highly educated immigrants less money than the U.S., study finds

2025/10/20 Leave a comment

Highlighting retention issues, relative wage gaps between visible minorities and not visible minority remain a concern:

Canada is “relatively successful” at attracting highly educated immigrants, but their counterparts in the United States earn more and have access to better opportunities, a new study says.

The neighbouring countries that have been largely at odds since the Trump administration took over are not only competing when it comes to industries, like the steel and auto sectors. They are also competing for skilled and educated people, especially those in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields.

Researchers noted that now is the time for Canada to push for the “best and the brightest” to come to the country, as the U.S. adopts “a far less welcoming immigration policy.”

The study from the Fraser Institute published on Thursday is shedding light on how certain Canadian immigrants are not reaping as many benefits as their U.S. counterparts who “perform better in terms of both employment status and earnings.” Those two factors are compared to native-born Canadians and Americans, respectively, as benchmarks.

In Canada, highly educated immigrants earned 16 per cent less than native Canadians. In the U.S., immigrants had a higher employment rate (1.2 per cent) and higher compensation (8 per cent) than Americans born in the country.

In 2020, visible minority immigrants in Canada with a bachelor’s degree or higher earned a median of $57,200, whereas native Canadians with a bachelor’s degree earned $68,300 on average.

“The differences were even greater when focusing on cohorts with advanced degrees,” said researchers. “Specifically, the median income of visible minority immigrants with a master’s degree was $65,500. For those with an earned doctorate, it was $84,000.” Canadians born in the country with a master’s earned an average of $84,400, while those with a doctorate earned $100,000.

The wage gap was likely due to “difficulties around the recognition of foreign credentials (and perhaps non-Canadian work experience) for newcomers seeking opportunities in the Canadian labour market,” researchers noted.

In the United States, data from 2022 showed that highly educated American immigrants earned US$122,000, while those born in the U.S. in with the same qualifications earned US$113,000. Researchers said that immigrants out-earning their American counterparts could be due to their “superior performance.”…

Source: Canada pays highly educated immigrants less money than the U.S., study finds

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Jena: As an immigrant, I’ve experienced Canada’s promise — a promise now at risk

2024/08/13 Leave a comment

Another legitimate warning:

…Despite these mounting crises, the federal government fixates on arbitrary immigration targets. It’s clear that the government needs to invest more in its health-care system, and in getting more homes built to meet the needs of a growing population. But it should also slow immigration growth until these investments take hold. Each year, more than half a million new permanent residents and hundreds of thousands of temporary workers and students arrive. This relentless, poorly planned surge deepens our crises. With 97 per cent of Canada’s population growth driven by newcomers. In 2023, Canada’s population growth rate was higher than the average of the world’s top 38 economies, the OECD countries….

Dr. Debakant Jena is a first-generation immigrant, an Orthopaedic Surgeon in Medicine Hat, Alberta, and an assistant professor at the University of Calgary. 

Source: As an immigrant, I’ve experienced Canada’s promise — a promise now at risk

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Pathways of Black, Latin American and other population groups in bachelor’s degree programs

2024/05/24 Leave a comment

Of interest and another demonstration of the value of disaggregated data between visible minority groups with of course the “why” questions harder to answer:

This article fills this gap by documenting various aspects of the postsecondary experience of different population groups with regard to bachelor’s degree programs. The findings suggest that different population groups registered very dissimilar experiences.

For example, Chinese students ranked near the top in bachelor’s degree enrolment rates; graduation rates; enrolment in math-intensive science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programs; and (among students who initially enrolled in STEM) STEMgraduation rates. By contrast, Black students consistently ranked near the bottom and trailed Chinese students by a considerable margin on all of these measures. Latin American students also ranked fairly low in most measures.

Meanwhile, other groups had varied experiences depending on the outcome. While White students ranked low in terms of bachelor’s degree enrolment rates, they ranked high in terms of graduation rates. White students also ranked low in math-intensive STEMenrolment rates, but among students who initially enrolled in STEM, their STEM graduation rates were among the highest. By contrast, Korean students were among the most likely to enrol in a bachelor’s degree program, but once in these programs, their graduation rates and math-intensive STEM enrolment rates were about average.

These results are important as they point to specific stages in the pursuit of higher education where choices and outcomes diverge across population groups, which could contribute to understanding the differences in labour market outcomes that exist across population groups. Understanding why certain population groups are less likely to graduate from a bachelor’s degree program would require information on the reasons for dropping out or switching programs. These may include academic difficulties, financial constraints or even favourable labour market opportunities. …

Source: Pathways of Black, Latin American and other population groups in bachelor’s degree programs

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Visible minorities have difficulty accessing the labour market

2024/04/29 Leave a comment

While some interesting comparisons between Quebec and the rest of Canada, some of the methodology is odd. Why pick the 15-24 cohort given than many are in college or university rather than the 25-34 cohort which I and others use to avoid that issue.

While the general contrast between visible minorities and not visible minorities is valid, it ignores some of the equally significant differences between visible minority groups.

Still interesting to note the persistence of gaps between Quebec and Canada:

…More and more newcomers to the job market will be members of a visible minority. The case of young Canadian-born visible minorities merits special attention, with the goal of preventing their socioeconomic exclusion and the potential consequences for social cohesion.

In a context where Quebec and the rest of Canada rely on immigration to address the labour shortage, logic would dictate that we first realize the full potential of those already present. The integration into the workforce of Canadian-born individuals from ethnocultural minority groups, particularly the young, must be among the priorities of policymakers so as to avoid a situation where integration difficulties are passed on from one generation to the next. Failing this, a growing share of the population risks being marginalized.

Governments, the business community and all relevant stakeholders must work together on this in order to permanently eliminate the barriers hindering the economic integration of these young individuals and preventing them from fully contributing to the progress of society.

Source: Visible minorities have difficulty accessing the labour market

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Immigrant families’ babies are healthier in poor neighbourhoods: study

2023/04/19 Leave a comment

Interesting findings, on the “healthy immigrant” effect and how that declines over time (a perverse form of integration):

In Ontario’s poorest neighbourhoods, newborns of non-refugee immigrant mothers face a lower risk of serious illness and death than those born to Canadian-born mothers, according to a study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal on Monday.

Both immigration status and living in a low-income neighbourhood are associated with worse outcomes for newborns, write researchers from the University of Toronto, two Toronto hospitals, the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

However, while previous research has looked at the risk of adverse outcomes for newborns in low- versus high-income neighbourhoods, the study’s authors said it has overlooked the comparative risks for babies born to immigrant and non-immigrant parents living in similar low-income neighbourhoods.

“Efforts should be aimed at improving the overall health and well-being of all females residing in low-income areas, and at determining if the risk of adverse birth outcomes can be equitably reduced among immigrant and non-immigrant groups,” wrote co-author Jennifer Jairam.

To compare the risk of severe neonatal illness and death in immigrant- and non-immigrant-born infants, researchers looked at data on all live, in-hospital births of single babies from 20 to 42 weeks’ gestation between 2002 and 2019 in Ontario.

Ontario, they wrote, is the landing place for about 53 per cent of all female immigrants who enter Canada.

They measured severe neonatal illness or disease by looking at breathing support, intravenous fluid use, birth before 32 weeks’ gestation, very low birth weight and respiratory distress.

During the study period, there were 414,241 single babies born to 312,124 mothers aged 15 years and older living in low-income urban neighbourhoods. Of all the live births during this period, 148,050 were to mothers who had immigrated to Canada, and 266,191 to Canadian-born mothers. Most of the mothers who immigrated to Canada came from South Asia and the East Asia and Pacific regions and had lived in Ontario for less than 10 years.

Jairam and her team found the risk of severe neonatal illness and death for newborns of mothers who had immigrated to Canada was significantly lower than for newborns of Canadian-born mothers, at 49.7 per 1,000 live births compared with 65.6 per 1,000 live births.

However, they said that risk varied depending on the country of origin, with a higher risk of severe neonatal illness and death in newborns of immigrants from Jamaica and Ghana, and in those who had lived for a greater length of time in Ontario.

THE ‘HEALTHY IMMIGRANT EFFECT’

Rather than suggesting immigrant mothers and their newborns receive better care in Ontario than Canadian-born mothers and babies, the authors believe their findings might be explained by the “healthy immigrant” effect.

“Immigrant females who are healthier and more resilient may be most capable of migration; the immigration policy of a host country may preferentially select healthy immigrants,” wrote Dr. Joel Ray, a physician at St. Michael’s Hospital and one of the study’s co-authors, adding that, paradoxically, immigrants face greater barriers to health care access.

According to the researchers, the “healthy immigrant” effect wanes relative to the length of time an immigrant spends living in a new country.

Another explanation the researchers suggested is some immigrants have greater net income, educational achievement and health literacy than the average for a low-income neighbourhood.

Either way, Jairam, Ray and their co-authors said the study underscores the importance of paying attention to trends at the neighbourhood level so pregnant parents and babies in low-income communities can hope for better health outcomes.

Source: Immigrant families’ babies are healthier in poor neighbourhoods: study

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Why the Children of Immigrants Are the Ones Getting Ahead in America

2022/06/02 Leave a comment

Good read, similar pattern in Canada for some visible minority groups. Likely explains in part the rise of populism:

In April 2020, the New York Times ran a special feature called “I Am the Portrait of Downward Mobility.” “It used to be a given that each American generation would do better than the last,” the piece began, “but social mobility has been slowing over time.”

In paging through the profiles, we couldn’t help noticing one group of Americans who defies this trend: the children of immigrants. Sonya Poe was born in a suburb of Dallas, Texas to parents who immigrated from Mexico. “My dad worked for a hotel,” Sonya recalled. “Their goal for us was always: Go to school, go to college, so that you can get a job that doesn’t require you to work late at night, so that you can choose what you get to do and take care of your family. We’re fortunate to be able to do that.”
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The dream that propels many immigrants to America’s shores is the possibility of offering a better future for their children. Using millions of records of immigrant families from 1880 to 1940 and then again from 1980 to today, we find that the in past and still today children of immigrants surpass their parents and move up the economic ladder. If this is the American Dream, then immigrants achieve it—big time.

One pattern that is particularly striking in the data is that the children of immigrants raised in households earning below the median income make substantial progress by the time they reach adulthood, both for the Ellis Island generation a century ago and for immigrants today. The children of first-generation immigrants growing up close to the bottom of the income distribution (say, at the 25th percentile) are more likely to reach the middle of the income distribution than are children of similarly poor U.S.-born parents.

What’s more, no matter which country their parents came from, children of immigrants are more likely than the children of the U.S.-born to surpass their parents’ incomes when they are adults. This pattern holds both in the past and today, despite major changes in U.S. immigration policy over the past century, from a regime of nearly open borders for European immigrants in 1900 to one of substantial restrictions in recent decades. Children of immigrants from Mexico and the Dominican Republic today are just as likely to move up from their parents’ circumstances as were children of poor Swedes and Finns a hundred years ago.

Not only does upward mobility define the horizons of people’s lives, but it also has implications for the economy as a whole. Even immigrants who come to the U.S. with few resources or skills bring an asset that is hugely beneficial to the U.S. economy: their children. The rapid success of immigrants’ children more than pays for the debts of their parents.

To conduct our analysis, we needed data that links children to parents. For the historical data, we used historical census records to link sons living in their childhood homes to census data collected 30 years later when these young men had jobs of their own.

Think of us like curious grandchildren searching branches of their family tree online, but a million times over. We started by digging through websites like Ancestry.com that allow the public to search for their relatives. From here, we developed methods to automate these searches so we could follow millions of immigrants and their children in the records.

Our modern data is based on federal income tax records instead. The tax records allow researchers to link children to their parents as tax dependents, and then observe these children in the tax data as adults.

When we compiled this data, what do we see?

The first striking takeaway is that, as a group, children of immigrants achieve more upward mobility than the children of U.S.-born fathers. We focus on the children of white U.S.-born fathers because the children of Black fathers tend to have lower rates of upward mobility. So, the mobility advantage that we observe for the children of immigrants would be even larger if we compared this group to the full population.

The second notable takeaway is that even children of parents from very poor countries like Nigeria and Laos outperform the children of the U.S.-born raised in similar households. The children of immigrants from Central American countries—countries like Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua that are often demonized for contributing to the “crisis” at the southern border—move up faster than the children of the U.S.-born, landing in the middle of the pack (right next to children of immigrants from Canada).

Our third finding is that the mobility advantage of the children of immigrants is just as strong today as it was in the past. What’s more, some of the immigrant groups that politicians accused long ago of having little to contribute to the economy—the Irish, Italians, and Portuguese—actually achieved the highest rates of upward mobility. For the past, we are only able to study sons because we cannot link daughters who change their name at marriage. But in the modern data we can see that this pattern applies to daughters as well.

Today, we might not be that surprised to learn that the children of past European immigrants succeeded. We are used to seeing the descendants of poor European immigrants rise to become members of the business and cultural elite. Many prominent leaders, including politicians like President Biden, regularly emphasize pride in their Irish or Italian heritage. But, at the time, these groups were considered the poorest of the poor. In their flight from famine, Irish immigrants are not too dissimilar from immigrants who flee hurricanes, earthquakes, and violent uprisings today.

We often hear concerns about how poor immigrants will fare and whether their children will get trapped in low-paying jobs or dependent on government support. But our data sleuthing should lay these fears to rest. The children of immigrants do typically make it in America. And it most often takes them only one generation to rise up from poverty.

One question that arises with our work is: what about children who arrive without papers? Undocumented children face more barriers to mobility than other children of immigrants. Fortunately, this group is relatively small even in recent years: only 1.5 million (or five percent) of the 32 million children of immigrant parents are undocumented today. Indeed, this number is small because many children of undocumented immigrants are born in the U.S. and thus are granted citizenship at birth.

The children in our data from countries like Mexico and El Salvador are those whose parents benefited from an earlier legalization effort in the mid-1980s. They are doing remarkably well now, and we believe that their counterparts today have this potential, as well. Children who arrive in the U.S. without papers face barriers to mobility—and not because they put in any less effort, but because they encounter obstacles all along their path. With a stroke of a pen, politicians can make that happen but, so far, this legislation has remained out of reach.

What enables the children of immigrants to escape poor circumstances and move up the economic ladder? The answer we hear most often is that immigrants have a better work ethic than the US-born and that immigrant parents put more emphasis on education.

We agree that the special features of immigrant families could be part of the story (although it’s hard to tell in our data). Yet when we crunched the numbers we found something surprising: immigrants tend to move to those locations in the U.S. that offer the best opportunities for upward mobility for their kids, whereas the U.S.-born are more rooted in place.

Generations of social science research has confirmed that where children grow up influences their opportunities in life. We find that immigrant parents are more likely than U.S.-born parents to settle in these high-opportunity areas, which are flush with good jobs and offer better prospects for mobility in the next generation. As striking proof that geography matters, we see that children of immigrants out-earn other children in a broad national comparison, but they do not earn more than other children who grew up in the same area. In terms of economic fortunes, the grown children of immigrants look similar to the children of U.S.-born parents who were raised down the block, or in the same town. This pattern implies that the primary difference between immigrant families and the families of the U.S.-born is in where they choose to live.

One implication of our findings is that it is very likely that U.S.-born families would have achieved the same success had they moved to such high-opportunity places themselves. In fact, we find that the children of U.S.-born parents who moved from one state to another have higher upward mobility than those who stayed put: their level of upward mobility is closer to (but not quite as high as) that of the children of immigrants who moved from abroad. So, you might ask: why don’t US-born families move out of a region when job opportunities dwindle?

Ironically, J.D. Vance (who is now running for Senate in Ohio on an anti-immigration platform) poses this question in his bestseller Hillbilly Elegy,aboutgrowing up in Middletown, Ohio, only 45 minutes from the border with Kentucky, the state where his family had lived for generations. For Vance, moving up the ladder meant moving out of his childhood community, a step that many Americans are unwilling to take. He went on to enlist in the Marines, and then to Ohio State and Yale Law School—“Though we sing the praises of social mobility,” he writes, “it has its downsides. The term necessarily implies a sort of movement—to a theoretically better life, yes, but also away from something.”

Vance is hitting on the cost of attaining upward mobility for children of U.S.-born parents. Many of the children of U.S.-born parents grow up in areas where their families settled long before, so economic mobility for them is often coupled with the costs of leaving home. By contrast, immigrants already took the step of leaving home to move to America, so they may be more willing to go wherever it takes within the country to find opportunity. In other words, U.S.-born families are more rooted in place, while immigrant families are more footloose—and this willingness to move toward opportunity seems to make all the difference.

Adapted from Abramitzky and Boustan’s new book Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success

Source: Why the Children of Immigrants Are the Ones Getting Ahead in America

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New research finds that preference for remaining is key to successful immigration: Turkish immigration in Germany study

2022/05/13 Leave a comment

Of interest:

New research finds that policies granting permanent residency to immigrants conditional on acquiring host country skills—like language—are most likely to generate higher fiscal contributions to the host country through income taxes. In fact, immigrants with a preference for remaining in the host country develop social contacts and other specific skills that allow them to find better paid jobs and stay for a longer time.

As immigration worldwide increases, host countries are faced with crucial policy decisions aimed at maximizing immigrants’ economic contributions. Designing the right policies requires understanding exactly how immigrants make their decision to migrate and return to their country of origin. Bocconi University, Milan, professors Jérôme Adda and Joseph-Simon Goerlach, with co-author Christian Dustmann (University College London), in a forthcoming article in The Review of Economic Studies, develop and estimate a that provides key insights into the decision-making process of immigrants. They find that immigrants’ expectations for the length of their stay and their location preferences can explain their decisions to invest in career improving skills, their acceptance of lower-paying jobs compared to natives, and how they respond to immigration policies on the duration and possibility of permanent residence.

While previous research focused only on productivity differences between immigrants to explain their career profiles, the authors argue that location preferences could be crucial in determining how much immigrants invest in acquiring skills that consequently impact their career profiles. For instance, an who prefers the host country and intends to stay permanently may invest more in learning the local language, familiarizing themselves with the local labor market, and developing social contacts and other host country-specific skills. Alternatively, a migrant with a location for their original country may not invest in these skills as they are likely undervalued back there. The authors model this preference and estimate the impact of location preferences and planned migration duration using data from surveys of Turkish immigrants in Germany over three decades, starting from 1961.

Indeed they find that immigrants who remain are higher-skilled due to their conscious investment in host-country skills. Their model is also able to explain why immigrants may be more willing to accept low-paid jobs compared to natives. They argue that immigrants from countries that have a lower price level and who want to return home would face higher effective wages since their wage allows them to consume more at home over their lifetime. Knowing this may encourage temporary migrants to accept lower-paid jobs.

The authors also use their model to compare three different types of prevalent today that grant permanent residency after 5 years either conditional on:

  1. An earning threshold (like the UK);
  2. Acquiring host-specific skills such as language (like in some countries of the EU);
  3. Granted randomly with 30% probability.

The authors find that scheme 1 selects for high productivity migrants and scheme 2 for those with a high preference for the host country.

Assuming a population of 25-year-olds migrating to Germany in 1970 as an example to estimate on, the earning threshold rule would generate an annual per capita increase in tax payments by €782 compared to if the policy wasn’t there. The host-specific skills rule would generate an average annual tax gain of €789 and fewer tax losses due to fewer individuals leaving the host country. The random lottery instead leads to a decrease in average annual taxes by €633 since the expected returns to investing in host country skills are reduced due to the scheme’s reliance on random chance. Furthermore, schemes 1 and 3, due to the barriers they pose to seeking permanent residency, reduce total immigration by about 26% whereas the host-specific skills rule does so by around 3%.

Thus, the authors show how these schemes could have differential impacts when one accounts for not only immigrants’ productivities but also their location preference / expected duration of stay. As the recent Ukrainian refugee crisis shows, such considerations are crucial for both the host countries’ goals as well as the lives and decisions of the arriving immigrants and their integration and acceptance in societies.

Source: New research finds that preference for remaining is key to successful immigration

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U.S. Could Actually Use More Nigerian Immigrants

2020/02/06 Leave a comment

By way of comparison, there are about 52,000 persons of Nigerian ethnic ancestry in Canada (Census 2016), about 71 percent first generation. In the last 5 years (January 2015 to November 2019, about 37,000 new Nigerian permanent residents have been admitted (IRCC, open data). Average and median incomes are lower than the overall Canadian numbers. While participation levels are stronger, unemployment levels are higher. Like most recent immigrant groups, Nigerians are more highly educated than the Canadian average.

See article for the charts regarding Nigerians in the USA:

This column will not render a verdict on whether the White House decision last week to suspend immigration from Nigeria — the world’s seventh most-populous nation — and five other countries was mainly an expression of bigotry from an administration led by a man who once likened African nations to latrines, or if it was a legitimate reaction to security concerns. It will, however, tell you some things you might not know about Nigerian immigrants in the U.S.

To start, there’s a fair number of them (which is why I’m focusing on Nigeria and not Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Sudan or Tanzania, the other five countries hit by the new ban). An estimated 374,311 Nigerian-born people were living in the U.S. in 2018, which put the country in 27th place as a source of foreign-born Americans, behind Pakistan and ahead of Japan. These and a lot of the numbers to follow are based on the American Community Survey that the U.S. Census Bureau sends out to 3.5 million households every year, so they’re subject to margins of error (19,648 for the number cited above), plus the inevitable strengths and limitations of self-reported statistics.

For example, the Census Bureau says there were an estimated 462,708 people of Nigerian ancestry in the U.S. in the 2018, but that’s based on what people put on the survey, not the sort of genealogical investigation that would surely reveal that there are millions of Americans whose forebears were brought across the Atlantic against their will in past centuries from the region of West Africa that is now Nigeria. Still, for our purposes the census survey is probably better, in that it restricts the scope mostly to recent immigrants and their kids. The members of this group have more than doubled in number since 2007, and they are for the most part doing quite well.

Source: U.S. Could Actually Use More Nigerian Immigrants

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Why Do Immigrants Outperform Native-Born Americans?

2019/11/01 Leave a comment

Some similarities in Canada:

Despite the hatred directed at immigrants and refugees coming to the United States and other western nations, a new report suggests that children of migrants are the ones realizing the upward mobility of the American dream, rising out of poverty at higher rates than the children of parents born in the US. Similar trends can be found in other parts of the world too, like Canada.

While the rich continue to get richer, and their offspring enjoy the advantages of an easy start in life, it is the people at the economic bottom where a parent’s migration history makes the real difference. A study by researchers at Stanford, Princeton, and the University of California at Davis is challenging pre-determined bias towards immigrants.

The team used millions of father-son pairs drawn from census data over 100 years of U.S. history to show that the children of immigrants are just as likely today as in the past to move out of poverty and into the middle-class. Further, the researchers report finding that, “both in the past and today, children of immigrants had greater chances of moving up in the income distribution relative to the children of US-born parents with comparable family income or occupation score. Second generation immigrants growing up in the 25th percentile end up 5–8 percentiles higher in the income rank than the children of the US born.”

It is not, as some ill-informed politicians have suggested, immigrants from Nordic countries who are most likely to experience this success. In fact, the sons of immigrants from China, India, and Vietnam are the ones mostly likely to be doing well, with even families that trace their roots back to Mexico, El Salvador and the Philippines showing better and steadier progress up the economic ladder than native-born Americans. Those Norwegians and Swedes are outflanked by their visible-minority peers.

At a time when we hear that the American dream is being threatened, we should celebrate that there are so many people experiencing the opportunities that come with education, strong social networks and parents who push their children to seek a better life. These young people are, if the data is accurate, much like the great grandparents of today’s less upwardly mobile populations who trace their roots back to Italy, Ireland and Portugal, all fair-skinned people that experienced the very same economic advantages of upward mobility decades ago.

What explains the difference? Why do the impoverished children of migrants outperform the impoverished children of native-born parents generation after generation?

The researchers attribute it partly to geography. Immigrants are more likely to settle in areas of their host country where there are more jobs and better educational opportunities. That is really no different than the ancestors of many native-born Americans who went to the coal mines of Virginia, the farms of Nebraska and the oil fields of Texas looking for work, only these days those places are experiencing job losses as a push towards less carbon-intensive industries and automation changes employment patterns. It is now Silicon Valley and the financial districts on the east coast that attract ambition.

While geography is one explanation, it is only one reason for the way immigrants find and exploit resources to enhance both their financial and mental wellbeing. Strong affiliations with other members of their diaspora has always been a way to ensure a cohesive economy where one member of a migrant community helps another find work, housing and navigate the intricacies of college applications and mortgage loans. The tighter the ex-pat community, the more resources are exchanged and the more success everyone enjoys.

Of course, grit, too, plays a role. Immigrants show a great deal of drive to succeed, and far more willingness to sacrifice for their children. While it is well-documented that migrants are often working in jobs where they are under-employed, the same is not true of children who are raised by families that value education and expect their children to study hard and graduate. These value systems distinguish any population that has had to struggle to survive. They are also the same characteristics that would have been found historically in the family trees of many of today’s native-born Americans who are, at least for the moment, securely anchored in the middle-class.

Before we demonize immigrants, it would be best if we looked at the science. As studies elsewhere in the world have shown, such as those by Daniel Hiebert in Canada, after just 20 years, immigrants and their children tend to match median incomes for their host countries and reach levels of home ownership and employment that are equal to, or above, the rates found among native-born populations.

Indeed, western nations like Canada that are now considering dramatic increases in immigration are ensuring that they enjoy the economic benefits of an upwardly mobile population with the personality traits and social skills to keep their GDP growing. Countries that resist immigration are forgetting lessons from the past and the spark of growth and innovation that immigrants brought to their economies. These psychological blinders, based on prejudice and a misunderstanding of economics, ignore the resilience of immigrant populations. If they are succeeding it is because they are adept at exploiting resources and exhibiting the ruggedness needed to rise out of poverty.

Source: Why Do Immigrants Outperform Native-Born Americans?

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Greater share of recent immigrants landing jobs even as Canada welcomes more

2019/06/10 Leave a comment

So far, so good:

The share of recent immigrants of prime working age who had employment reached a new high last year, even though Canada has been opening its doors to more newcomers than ever before, according to an internal federal analysis.

The increase was likely driven in part by the country’s strong job-creation run, which has encouraged companies to hire more people who usually find themselves at the margins of the workforce, says the document prepared for Finance Minister Bill Morneau. Immigrants who arrived less than five years ago fall into that category.

The analysis provides a closer look at the impact of immigration on a labour force that has posted big gains in recent years.

After economic slowdown last winter the unemployment rate has hovered near 40-year lows. As a result, employers have reported challenges when trying to fill job vacancies.

“The performance of recent immigrants on the labour market has markedly improved in recent years, especially when considering the scale of immigrants arriving in Canada every year,” reads the January briefing note, obtained through access-to-information law.

The memo says the employment rate for immigrants aged 25 to 54 who landed less than five years ago, was 71 per cent last year. It was the indicator’s highest level since 2006 — which is as far back as the data goes.

“Similar trends are witnessed for immigrants that landed between five and 10 years ago,” the briefing said.

The labour-force participation and unemployment rates of recent immigrants were better than before the last recession, over a decade ago. Selection criteria have targeted immigrants with better earnings prospects and recent newcomers to Canada are more highly educated, the analysis said.

The share of prime-aged immigrants with post-secondary educations rose from 75 per cent in 2006 to 80 per cent in 2018. That’s nine percentage points higher than the share in the general population in the same age range.

Canada has welcomed more immigrants in recent years — and the government intends to bring in more. It has set targets of nearly 331,000 newcomers this year, 341,000 in 2020 and 350,000 in 2021.

The numbers are rising at a time of growing public debate about some aspects of immigration. It could become an issue in the lead-up to the October federal vote.

A lobby group representing chief executives of Canada biggest companies has urged political parties to avoid aggravating public concerns about immigration during the campaign.

Business leaders made clear the economic case in favour of immigration, especially as baby boomers age and the country seeks workers to help fund social programs, like public health care, through taxes.

The Finance Department document argues that, in general, immigrants in Canada have done well because the country has maintained a positive attitude towards immigration.

“The topic of immigration has become more polarized in a number of countries, which may reflect the poor socio-economic outcomes for immigrants and economic stagnation of the middle class who use immigration as a scapegoat,” it says.

“The economic benefits of immigration are largely dependent on how well newcomers integrate into the labour market. Increasing immigration — or any increase in the population — will drive demand for goods and services, contributing to economic growth.”

The document also noted the strong economic and education outcomes for second-generation Canadians, compared to children of two Canadian-born parents.

Among individuals aged 25 to 44, 95 per cent of second-generation Canadians had completed high school compared to 89 per cent of those whose parents were both Canadian-born. Forty-one per cent of second-generation Canadians had university degrees versus 24 per cent of people with two Canadian-born parents.

In 2017, second-generation Canadians earned average employment incomes of $55,500, versus $51,600 for children of Canadian-born parents.

Source: Greater share of recent immigrants landing jobs even as Canada welcomes more

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