Abstract
Although Canada’s immigration policy has long emphasized the selection of highly skilled immigrants—and since the 1990s, preferably those with high levels of post-secondary education—certain critical gaps have emerged between this skilled immigration emphasis and what actually happens in Canadian labor markets. Emphasis on education is usually described as necessary to meet the demand for skilled workers, projected to become more severe over time because of the requirements of an emerging knowledge economy. However, there are three major “gaps” between this skilled immigration and the actual role of immigrants in Canadian labor markets.
An earlier draft of this chapter was presented at a seminar on “Labor Markets in North America: Challenges and Opportunities in an Aging Workforce”, organized by the North American Commission for Labor Cooperation and the Centre de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), Mexico City, November 13, 2006.
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Notes
- 1.
US legal immigration numbers have averaged about one million over the past two decades (Office of Immigration Statistics 2010, p. 5), or about 0.3 % of population. US illegal immigration numbers vary considerably, however, before the recent economic downturn they averaged between 500,000 and 800,000 per year (Passel and Cohn 2010, p. 1), so in most years the total is about 0.5 % of population.
- 2.
‘Visible minorities’ is a term introduced into Canadian parlance by a Parliamentary report (Canada 1984) and into mandated census statistics by the Employment Equity Act first passed in 1986.
- 3.
In 2001 data, although the proportion of persons aged 25–39 with bachelor’s degrees is much higher in the US than in Canada (31.6 % compared to 19.2 %), the proportion with any post-secondary education is actually higher in Canada (65.9 in Canada compared to 60.2 % in the US); see Reitz and Zhang (2011); Reitz et al. 2011, OECD (2010, pp. 34–39).
- 4.
Although immigrants with university degrees encounter some labor market obstacles to recognition of their credentials, labor force data clearly show that over time, they have more occupational success than less educated immigrants (see the review by Reitz 2007a). Data from the immigration database (IMDB, which tracks immigrant earnings from the entry into the country using tax records) indicates that immigrants admitted based on points have had more occupational success than those admitted under other categories (Citizenship and Immigration Canada 1998).
- 5.
This figure of 200,000 illegal immigrants in Canada was reported by Marina Jimenez in the Globe and Mail, for example in 15 Nov. 2003, “200,000 illegal immigrants toiling in Canada’s underground economy”.
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Reitz, J.G. (2013). Closing the Gaps Between Skilled Immigration and Canadian Labor Markets: Emerging Policy Issues and Priorities. In: Triadafilopoulos, T. (eds) Wanted and Welcome?. Immigrants and Minorities, Politics and Policy. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0082-0_8
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