About Canada: Immigration

Edmonton, Alberta Toronto, Ontario Montreal, Quebec

Canada traditionally attracts immigrants from around the world and they have contributed to making Canada a highly diverse society, both ethnically and culturally. One in five people living in Canada was not born there and in cities like Toronto this is true for some 44% of the populace. Nonetheless, in Canada there is broad consensus that immigrants enrich the community economically as well as culturally.

Thus, it is not surprising that Canada has established a regulatory framework where immigrants are selected either by means of a point system, or based on close family ties or on humanitarian grounds. Canada also pays special attention to the needs of new arrivals and provides language training and social integration programs in cooperation with provincial and municipal groups.

The population structure of contemporary Canada is the result of an immigration process over several centuries. The first peoples to come to the area of today’s Canada were the ancestors of Canada ’s aboriginal peoples who came over a land bridge from Asia around 30,000 B.C. The first Europeans to settle in Canada temporarily were the Vikings who established a settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland around the year 1000. But it was another 500 years before other Europeans came to explore Canada . As a result of the exploration, Canada became a place to receive migrants. For a long time, French and British immigrants accounted for the largest part in this migration. In 1867, the date of Canadian Confederation, about 90% of the entire population belonged to the so-called charter groups, i.e. descendants from immigrants from France and Great Britain , since then known as the “founding nations”. This group settled mostly in Eastern Canada : the inhabitants of French origin mostly in Québec, and those of English, Irish, or Scottish descent in all parts of pre-Confederation Canada . English-speaking colonists, also referred to as United Empire Loyalists, immigrated from the newly founded United States of America at the end of the 18 th century. They settled in what is now southern Québec , Ontario and the Maritime Provinces .

In the prairie provinces , a much more colourful mosaic of ethnic groups developed. Supported by numerous incentives such as cheap passages and low priced credits for land purchases, the Liberal government under Sir Wilfrid Laurier, in power since 1896, was able to “advertise” the Western provinces to the great numbers of Europeans willing to migrate. As opposed to the early days of colonisation, immigrants now came from various different countries, especially from Russia , Ukraine , Germany , Scandinavia , Poland and the Netherlands .

Laurier’s effort to attract settlers and thus forge the development of the West proved highly successful: Immigrant numbers rose to more than 100,000 in 1903 and reached record highs of up to 400,000 immigrants per year between 1911 and 1913.

This changed dramatically during the Great Depression in the 1930s as well as during World War II. Owing to a more restrictive immigration policy, the number of people coming to Canada each year decreased. Immigration increased again after 1945. The bleak situation and destruction in post-war Europe and the suppression in Eastern Europe which caused bloody uprisings like the one in Hungary in 1956, motivated countless immigrants to try to build a new life in Canada . As workers were needed for the labour force, the government opened immigration offices all over Europe and encouraged the migration of persons who were of good health and good character and were prepared to work on arrival. After World War II, immigrants not only came from Great Britain, Germany or other Western or Northern European countries, but increasingly so from Italy, Greece, and Portugal. Over the ensuing decades, the European economies boomed and within Europe foreign workers migrated more within the continent. European immigration to Canada ebbed and by 2001 it had fallen to only 17% of the annual intake.

Since 1967, the numbers of immigrants coming from other regions of the world, e.g. from Asia , Africa and Latin America began to grow continually. The overall annual intake since 1991 has been about one quarter of a million persons per year. Canada also welcomes some 20,000 temporary foreign workers and 30,000 foreign students each year, some of which later decide to become Canadian immigrants. Of the 1.8 million immigrants who came to Canada between 1991 and 2001, 58% hailed from Asia , most of them from China , India , and Pakistan . A total of 73% of the immigrants from that period settled in one of the country’s three major cities with the result that the number of migrants in the population of Toronto , Montreal , and Vancouver who are foreign-born is above the average of other North American cities. Toronto even takes a global lead with 44 % of the population being foreign-born.

The idea of a controlled and government-regulated immigration being central and vital for Canada’s future was first introduced by the government of Wilfrid Laurier at the end of the 19 th century and became an undisputed principle for Canada’s immigration It was agreed across party boundaries that it was necessary for Canada to open itself more, not only because of the political and humanitarian values Canadian society had devoted itself to but also to meet the economic and demographic challenges Canada was (and still is) facing, such as a lack of specialized skilled labour and an aging society.

In 1967, with the introduction of a point system and the principle of universality, the practice of choosing immigrants by their region or ethnicity was finally abandoned. Universality means that all prospective immigrants from anywhere in the world are judged according to common standards. Under the “point system”, the key criteria for successful immigration became age, education, language proficiency and job experience, and other factors that relate to successful economic establishment in Canada , each assigned a predetermined number of points. The point system is also applied in most cases to business immigrants : investors and entrepreneurs who bring capital into the country and create employment.

There are two further categories for migrants. While the category of refugees presents the humanitarian aspect of Canadian immigration policy, migration based on family reunion is rooted in Canada ’s social policy. In the latter category, only immediate relatives (spouses, children, parents, grandparents) of Canadian citizens or of permanent residents are entitled to immigrate. The person already living in Canada has to sponsor their relative and has to pledge to financially support their relative for up to ten years, depending on the degree of their relationship.

More distant relatives have to qualify within the point system just like all other potential immigrants without family ties in Canada . There is also the opportunity to apply for an immigrant visa for a specific province or territory within the framework of the Provincial Nominee Programme. The annual number of provincial nominees depends on labour market and other economic and social factors, which may vary from province to province or territory to territory.

Under the Canadian constitution, the responsibility for selection and integration of immigrants is shared between the federal and provincial governments. In 1986, Québec was the first province that signed an immigration agreement with the Government of Canada: the Canada-Québec-Accord. It allows Québec to select immigrants who best meet its immigration needs and are best able to integrate in an extensively French-speaking milieu. Today, almost all of the provinces and territories have similar provincial nominee programmes. Regardless of the programme or category within which an applicant is granted immigration to Canada , they can become a Canadian citizen at the earliest only after three years of permanent residence in Canada . It is not required to give up any previous citizenships.