Shall I Stay Or Shall I Go

Immigration hopping well what did ya expect. Those with skills move, those with little stay, refugees stay, those who do not have easily transferable skills or lack skills in both official languages stay, families stay. Proving that all that money we have spent targeting the wealthy businessmen and skilled craftsmen/professionals, was money well wasted. Over a decade of targeted immigration was a failure. Duh Oh.

Oh yeah and don't forget that since this is a long study going back twenty years its major finding was; Immigrant retention rates in the recession years of 1981 and 1991 were lower (at 80.9 per cent and 72.6 per cent respectively) than in the boom years of 1986 and 1996 (at 90.2 per cent and 76.3 per cent). Make that another Duh Oh.

So we need to change our immigration priorities to those who would stay and retain their ability to be trained for our economic needs. Or is that too rational, a little too much planing for the free market. If so then we could just open our doors to whoever wanted to come here. That would allow for a higher retention rate. Which of course the right wing opposes.

Many skilled immigrants aren't staying

One in six male immigrants leaves Canada for better opportunities elsewhere within the first year of arrival, and those most likely to emigrate are the cream of the crop: businessmen and skilled workers. Kunz downplays the notion that the immigrants who stay behind might not be those Canada most wants and would unnecessarily burden the settlement system. (People who arrive through family reunification have a 30 per cent departure rate, while refugees have the lowest at 20 per cent.) The bottom line, Kunz said, is newcomers need to feel welcomed in Canada and have the ability to get established here.According to the study, married immigrants stay about 25 per cent longer than singles, and are 40 per cent more likely to stay than those widowed, divorced or separated.One way to keep newcomers here, U of T's Reitz suggests, is for Canada to carefully balance immigrant numbers between the family and business/skilled worker categories. "People stay where their families are," he noted

Many working-age immigrants leave: Statistics Canada

The study found higher departure rates among immigrants who were admitted in the business and skilled-worker classes, noting that the global labour market makes their mobility easier.

Refugee claimants had the lowest departure rates.

Newcomers from the United States and Hong Kong were most likely to leave Canada, with about half leaving within 10 years. Newcomers from Europe or the Caribbean, in contrast, were about half as likely to leave.

Language was also a factor. Bilingual immigrants and those fluent in French had 25 per cent shorter stays. Married immigrants stayed 25 per cent longer than single immigrants.

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Canada, immigration, StatsCan