Citizenship – Differences Among Visible Minorities

A recent Twitter enquiry asked what percentage of visible minorities are also Canadian citizens. The overall answer is 78.3 percent, but that question provoked me to prepare the following chart showing the differences between different groups:

The chart is ordered in increasing order of those who remain non-citizens (but does not distinguish between those who are eligible or not).

Hard to explain some of these differences as no one variable (e.g., education, income, number of second-generation or more) seems at play. Nor is the time resident in Canada (needed to be eligible) likely to be a significant factor as it could not explain the large differences between groups (e.g., Chinese and Filipino).

The relatively large share of dual nationals for West Asian, Arab and Latin American groups may be explained by the greater convenience of being able to return to one’s country of origin with that country’s passport (e.g., Iranian Canadians cannot enter Iran on their Canadian passport and thus need to maintain their Iranian nationality).