‘Satisfaction gap’ hinders the immigrant experience

A recent working paper by Peter Burton and Shelley Phipps of Dalhousie University studies the life satisfaction of youth who immigrated to Canada as children, plus immigrant parents. They used data on thousands of recent immigrants and Canadian-born families collected through the Canadian Community Health Survey from 2002 to 2008.

Immigrants’ lower satisfaction comes down, in part, to economics. The immigrant families Burton and Phipps studied had incomes approximately one third lower than those of comparable Canadian families. These income differences explained more than one quarter of the satisfaction gap between Canadian-born and immigrant youth. For parents, the loss of life satisfaction due to low income was even greater, perhaps because parents make sacrifices to shield their children from economic hardship.

Yet no one expects immigration to be easy. Coming to a new country, not speaking the language, and being separated from family and friends is hard. For girls in particular, ethnicity and language appear to explain a significant portion of the satisfaction gap between immigrants and non-immigrants.

Language and ethnicity are important to parents too. Burton and Phipps found that 43.5 per cent of the gap in satisfaction between immigrant and Canadian-born mothers could be explained in terms of language and ethnicity differences, with East Asian and Black parents (but not South Asian ones) experiencing lower levels of life satisfaction.

But does it get easier over time?

Burton and Phipps answered this question by looking at people’s sense of belonging, how they answered the question ““How would you rate your sense of belonging to your local community?”

Immigrants felt less of a sense of belonging than the Canadian-born. For youth, feeling like you don’t belong is a better predictor of being less satisfied with life than being an immigrant. Indeed, once Burton and Phipps controlled for people’s sense of belonging, the gap between immigrant and comparable non-immigrant youth went away. (That was not true for parents, however -- even immigrant parents who felt like they belonged to their local communities were still less satisfied than non-immigrants).

But is feeling like you belong just a matter of time, something that builds the longer you’re in Canada? For parents, the answer is yes: the longer immigrant mothers and fathers live in Canada, the more they feel like they belong to their local communities.

For teenage girls, however, the answer is no -- girls who have been in Canada for longer are less likely to feel a strong sense of belonging to their local community.

After reading Burton and Phipps’ paper, three things struck me.

The first was the sheer magnitude of the satisfaction difference between immigrant and Canadian-born mothers: 22.9 per cent of immigrant mothers -- those who have been in Canada 17 years or less -- are very satisfied with life, compared to 48.5 per cent of Canadian-born mothers. I wonder: are there policies that would reach out directly to immigrant mothers, getting people involved in the local community, whether that’s coming to meet the teacher nights, or joining school councils? Or is it just economics: immigrant mothers are shouldering the burden of making ends meet.

The second thing that struck me about Burton and Phipps’ was the pain of not belonging. How will immigrant girls who find themselves caught between different sets of cultural expectations sort it all out?

Finally, it’s not all bad news for immigrants. Immigrants are, on average, more likely to be in excellent health than the Canadian born. Researchers call this the healthy immigrant effect, and attribute it to diet. Immigrants are also more likely to live in two-parent families. By making good lifestyle choices, like instilling healthy eating habits, immigrant parents may be building the foundation for future life satisfaction.

Economy Lab - Globe & Mail

Changes to economic immigration programs will help further reduce backlogs and improve wait times

Ottawa, June 24, 2011 — Canada is adjusting its intake of applications from economic immigrants to further reduce the backlog and improve wait times while meeting the country’s labour market needs, Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney announced today.

“The backlog of federal skilled worker applications is now half of what it was when we announced the Action Plan for Faster Immigration in 2008,” said Minister Kenney. “These measures will help us to continue that progress.”

Canada receives many more immigration applications than can be accepted every year. As part of ongoing efforts to better align application intake with priorities for immigration, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) is limiting the number of new applications it will consider in certain categories of the federal economic immigration stream.

Effective July 1, 2011, the changes will affect new applicants to the federal Skilled Worker, federal Immigrant Investor and federal Entrepreneur programs. The changes will not affect the number of permanent resident admissions in 2011 in these three categories.

“Canada continues to welcome historically high numbers of new immigrants each year, but the Government continues to receive applications that far exceed this number,” said Minister Kenney. “If we don't keep putting reasonable limits on new applications, backlogs and wait times will grow.”

In November 2008, the government first took steps to identify for processing those federal skilled worker applications that responded to Canada’s labour needs, such as applicants with arranged employment offers from Canadian employers or with experience in an occupation in high demand. In June 2010, the government released an updated list of 29 priority occupations and introduced a global cap of 20,000 for federal skilled workers, as well as a sub-cap of 1,000 under each occupation. Over the past year, CIC has received approximately 13,800 federal skilled worker applications under the priority occupations list (figure accurate as of June 24, 2011).

Now, for applicants who do not have an offer of employment in Canada, the government will further limit the number of new federal skilled worker applications that are considered for processing to 10,000 a year, beginning July 1. This limit will help better align the number of applications with labour market demand. Within the 10,000 limit, a maximum of 500 new applications in each of the current 29 priority occupations will be considered.

In addition, the Minister is introducing a cap of 700 on new federal investor applications. Although last year, CIC made changes that raised the minimum net worth and investment requirements, it continues to receive applications in excess of what is required. An annual cap on new applications will allow for progress on backlog reduction while ensuring that the Department has a sufficient volume of new files to meet its commitments.

The Minister is also introducing a temporary moratorium on new federal entrepreneur applications. Wait times for this program currently stretch to eight years in some visa offices. By ceasing to accept new applications as of July 1, the government will prevent further processing delays. The federal Entrepreneur Program will undergo a review in the coming months to ensure that Canada is better able to attract and retain innovative entrepreneurs.

The authority for these changes, which are being introduced through ministerial instructions, comes from amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Actapproved by Parliament in 2008 as part of the Action Plan for Faster Immigration. The instructions are meant to be a flexible tool that allows the government to align the intake of immigration applications with priorities for immigration.

Since these changes were implemented in November 2008, the backlog of pre-2008 federal skilled worker applicants has decreased by 50 percent. As well, priority applications are being processed in a period of months rather than years, as was the case prior to the 2008 changes.

The CIC website will be updated on July 1, 2011, with details on application requirements and procedures for affected programs

New rules to strengthen the Temporary Foreign Worker Program

Improvements to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) will ensure that the program continues to be fair to employers and maintain its focus on alleviating temporary labour shortages.

The regulatory improvements to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program include the most significant changes to the program in many years. There are three major elements:

• a more rigorous assessment of the genuineness of the job offer;
• a two-year period of ineligibility for hiring temporary foreign workers for employers who fail to meet their commitments with respect to wages, working conditions and occupation; and
• a four-year limit on the length of time some temporary foreign workers may work in Canada before returning home.

For more details on the regulatory improvements, please see Protecting Temporary Foreign Workers and Four-Year Limit for Foreign Nationals Working in Canada.

The Temporary Foreign Worker Program is driven by employer demand and aimed at filling identified labour shortages where no suitable Canadian workers or permanent residents are available.