A Portrait of Early Settlement Experiences: Background

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Background

Canada is one of the few countries in the world that actively pursues admission of permanent residents as a means to help build a stronger nation¹. In the 1990s, 2.2 million immigrants were admitted to Canada – the highest number admitted in any decade in the past 100 years. During this period, immigration accounted for the largest source of population increase in major urban centres and also represented a substantial proportion of total labour force growth.

Immigration and the integration of newcomers are central to many public policies, and are the focus of much public interest. The Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC), conducted by Statistics Canada with Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), will help to guide policy development and inform the public. This comprehensive survey is designed to study how recent immigrants adjust to living in Canada and to provide information on the factors that can help or hinder this adjustment.

Immigrants in the LSIC population² entered Canada under the Immigration Act of 1976, which became law in 1978 and was amended in 1993. This Act set out three basic social, humanitarian and economic goals for the immigration program:

to foster the development of a strong, viable economy in all regions of the country;

to facilitate the reunion in Canada of Canadian residents with close family members from abroad, and;

to fulfil Canada 's legal obligations with respect to refugees and to uphold its humanitarian tradition.

While the relative importance of these goals has shifted over recent years, each has remained an integral part of the Canadian immigration program. With these shifting priorities, the composition of the immigration flow by category has fluctuated, but the volume has remained relatively stable as a proportion of the total Canadian population – ranging from 0.6% to 0.9% during the 1991-2001 period.

Until the early 1970s, despite some minor diversification of source countries, immigrants to Canada came almost exclusively from Western European countries. Between 1970 and 2000, the predominant source countries changed from Britain , the United States , Italy , Portugal and Greece , to China , India , Pakistan , the Philippines and the Republic of Korea . As newcomers have increasingly arrived from countries with a wide range of histories and experiences the issue of integration may imply different challenges.

Notes

In 2001, immigrants per 1000 population - Canada: 8.3; Australia: 5.7; US: 3.1; European Economic Association: 3.0; Japan: 0.3.

In this publication the immigrant or the LSIC population refers to immigrants who met a specific criteria outlined in About the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada and who were interviewed in Wave One. The sample was drawn between October 2000 and September 2001, prior to when the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) came into effect (June 28, 2002).