Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Race and immigration in Canada

The Canadian government prefers immigrants from Asia rather than the Caribbean and Latin America. In Canada, Chinese and South Asians are the most likely to have university degrees or higher, and to be employed in high-skilled occupations. Second-generation youth of Caribbean and Latin American origin don’t fare so well and tend to obtain lower levels of education than native-born Canadian kids and wind up in less skilled jobs. Since 1999, China and India have been the top two source countries for immigrants to Canada, averaging about 60,000 landings per year, while the number coming from the Caribbean has fallen sharply. Immigration from the West Indies has fallen 45% below levels seen in the early 1990s when more than 16,000 from that region were entering the country annually. The average wait time for someone wishing to bring a spouse into Canada from Kingston, Jamaica has ballooned to 15 months, fully three times the processing time in 2006. A similar application lodged in New Delhi takes just six months.

No comments: