An overview of the immigrant population born in the United States living in Canada

The ties between Canada and the United States are deep and are reflected by migration in both directions across the border. Although the flow of US immigrants to Canada has slowed from a high in 1971, when they represented 11% of recent immigrants, it has never stopped. According to the 2021 Census of Population, US immigrants accounted for 3% of recent immigrants, making the United States the sixth most important source country of recent immigrants to Canada.

Today, Statistics Canada is releasing a new study, entitled "An overview of the immigrant population born in the United States living in Canada," which outlines the sociodemographic characteristics of US-born immigrants living in Canada (herein referred to as US immigrants) then delves into their labour market and economic outcomes.

The US immigrant population is older than the overall immigrant population in Canada

In 2021, the US immigrant population (52.4 years) had an older median age than both the Canadian-born population (38.8 years) and the total immigrant population (49.2 years).

More than one-third (33.5%) of the US immigrant population living in Canada had at least one parent born outside of the United States and outside of Canada, and close to one-quarter (23.6%) belonged to a racialized group. These shares were even higher among recent US immigrants (46.9% had at least one parent born outside of the United States and outside of Canada, and 40.5% belonged to a racialized group), which would indicate that this population is increasingly diversified.

US immigrants have more favourable labour market outcomes than the overall immigrant population but less favourable than those of the Canadian-born population and immigrants from France and the United Kingdom

US immigrants have the training and experiences needed to succeed in the Canadian job market. For example, among individuals aged 25 to 54 years, over half (51.6%) of US immigrants held a bachelor's degree or higher in 2021, which is over 20 percentage points higher than the proportion among the Canadian-born population (29.8%). US immigrants (35.9%) were also more likely to have pre-admission work experience than immigrants overall (19.9%). As well, nearly all US immigrants could speak English or French (99.2%), compared with 92.7% for immigrants overall.

Although US immigrants had better labour market outcomes than the overall immigrant population, they did not fare as well as the Canadian-born population. Their labour market outcomes were also below those of immigrants from the United Kingdom and France, two other G7 countries that are among the top sources of core working-age immigrants to Canada. In particular, compared with immigrants from the United Kingdom and France, US immigrants had lower participation rates, higher unemployment rates, higher overqualification, higher income inequality and lower entry employment income and growth in the 10 years following their admission.

These relatively lower outcomes of US immigrants may be related to the fact that, unlike immigrants from the United Kingdom (70.0%) and France (85.5%) who are mostly economic immigrants selected for their ability to contribute to Canada's economy, most US immigrants are sponsored by family members (63.4%).

Given that we can expect migration flows to continue in the future in both directions across the border, it will be important to keep on monitoring the socioeconomic outcomes of US immigrants in Canada.