Asian immigrants have great confidence in the value of education

Are the immigrants in Canada fairing well? The answer depends upon which one are you talking about. The Asians i.e. Chinese, Indians and Japanese are doing very well and in fact, they achieve higher level of education and earn more than long-standing Canadians in the same amount of time.

Last week, Statistics Canada released reports that examined the educational attainment and incomes of immigrants of Canada. The key results are unlikely to surprise anyone who has been to a high school graduation recently. Usually, the Indian and Chinese immigrants’ children walk away with awards and get themselves admitted to the best university programs.

Almost all children of immigrants finish high school with 94 percent, higher than the children of Canadian-born parents (88 percent). Although the results are almost similar till this point, the gap in educational attainment actually grows at university. The reports revealed that children of immigrants are more likely to get university degree (38 percent), than children of Canadian-born parents (28 percent).

But to say that children of all immigrants succeed will be something far from the truth. Specifically, in terms of education, 70 percent children of Chinese immigrants have university degrees, with Indians next at 65 percent, followed by other Asian at 52 percent. At the bottom are children of Caribbean (26 percent), Portuguese (26 percent) and Latin American (24 percent), and these lag behind the children of Canadian-born parents.

The higher your education is, the more you are likely to earn. This was shown in the 2006 census results, according to which white immigrants with university degrees earn $68,036 a year on an average, which is greater than the average of Canadian-born at $65,000. However, the average annual income of Asian immigrants is lesser- Japan at $58,294 and China at $55,270. Black immigrants with degrees earn even less with an annual income of just $51,317.

So, what is there to learn from this data? The statistics do not explain causes, but being a son of an Asian immigrant, this is no mystery for me as to why do children of Indian and Chinese immigrants do exceedingly well.

Actually, Asian parents are more habituated to a rather more demanding educational system, and so when they apply the same standards to more accommodating Canadian schools, their children come out as winners and top their classes. Asian parents have great belief in the value of education, may be even more than their Canadian counterparts.