Canada must focus on economic immigrants-Researchers

Canada, 31st August: Canada must give priority to economic immigrants, researchers have revealed in a latest study.

The study asserts Canada immigration department must focus on allowing skill-assessed economic immigrants whose levels of earnings are greater than other immigrants.

Allow economic immigrants-study--The study by Queen’s University researchers comes at a time when CIC (Citizenship and Immigration Canada) is carrying out public consultations regarding the number and the mix of immigrants to be taken by Canada.

The economists have revealed in their paper titled ‘differences in earnings across different categories of immigrants’ in Canada has been published through Canada Labor Market and Skills Researcher Network.

Economic immigrants earn more than other immigrants--According to their paper, median earnings of economic immigrants allowed into Canada were higher by 56 percent than immigrants coming to Canada under other categories.

Foreigners coming as economic immigrants in Canada are selected on the basis of their education and experience.

Recession affected immigrants’ earning potential--The study also pointed out that economic crisis had a worst impact on the earning potential of immigrants coming to Canada under various immigration streams.

The researchers Charles Beach and Michael Abbott analyzed the figures of CIC for a period of ten years for knowing the annual earnings of immigrants coming to Canada in the year 1982, 1988 and 1994 respectively.

The researchers further compared the annual earnings of immigrants under different Canada immigration streams to ascertain the significance of skills of immigrants coming here.

They found that earning levels of family class immigrants and refugees was the lowest. It was also revealed that earning of refugees coming to Canada declined with each cohort.

Nonetheless, one thing is for sure that immigrants under various immigration streams were affected by economic crisis, irrespective of their skills or education. Economic downturn continued to affect the earnings of immigrants even after it had been over officially in Canada.

Restrict immigrants during recession—One of the researchers of the study, Beach says that study findings suggest on the need for cutting back the immigration levels during economic downturn.

Speaking of the recent recession, he said that immigration levels kept on increasing. Moreover, the number of immigrants coming to Canada as provincial nominees and temporary foreign workers also witnessed a rise.

Currently, the number of economic immigrants coming to Canada is said to be 30 percent while those coming under Family class immigrants is around 26 percent of the total immigration to Canada.