Canada Adds 29,300 Jobs in April, More Than Forecast (Update1)
Canada Adds 29,300 Jobs in April, More Than Forecast (Update1)
May 6 (Bloomberg) -- Canadian employers added a more-than- forecast 29,300 workers in April, reflecting a jump in construction and government jobs.
The unemployment rate fell to 6.8 percent, the lowest since December 2000, Statistics Canada said in Ottawa today. The economy was forecast to add 17,000 jobs, according to the median estimate of 25 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.
Job growth in Canada during the past two years has lifted incomes and fueled spending at a time when manufacturers are finding it tougher to compete with U.S. rivals because of a rise in the Canadian dollar versus its U.S. counterpart.
Household spending and business investment will help the economy expand fast enough this year to warrant higher interest rates in the future, Bank of Canada David Dodge has predicted.
Canada's dollar advanced 0.3 percent to 80.54 U.S. cents at 7:03 a.m. in Toronto, from 80.29 cents late yesterday. One U.S. dollar buys C$1.2416.
The economy added 49,600 full-time jobs, partly offset by a loss of 20,100 part-time jobs. Construction added 25,600 workers and jobs in government grew by 37,800. Factories shed 29,400 workers.
To contact the reporters on this story: Theo Argitis in Ottawa at targitis@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: May 6, 2005 07:21 EDT
source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000082&sid=aglYFyGbPccI
Friday, May 06, 2005
Canada economy adds jobs in April but factories hit
By David Ljunggren
Fri May 6, 7:52 AM ET
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada\'s economy created 29,300 jobs in April, almost twice the number expected, but the figure was overshadowed by further heavy losses in a manufacturing sector hit by the high Canadian dollar and cheap imports.
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Statistics Canada said on Friday that modest job growth meant the unemployment rate in April fell to 6.8 percent from 6.9 percent, its lowest level since December 2000. Analysts had forecast the rate would stay unchanged at 6.9 percent and that 15,000 jobs would be added.
The Canadian dollar hit a 10-day high on the strong headline figures while bond prices were down.
Statscan said the number of factory jobs dropped by 29,400 in April, bringing the sector\'s losses to 72,200 jobs since April 2004. It was the single largest monthly loss of manufacturing jobs since November 2001, when 34,200 positions vanished.
\"In the April Business Conditions Survey, manufacturers identified a number of impediments to production, including the high value of the Canadian dollar and inexpensive foreign imports,\" Statscan said in its daily bulletin.
Analysts said the figures were not as good as they looked but the drop in the jobless rate could influence the Bank of Canada as it decides whether to raise interest rates, which have been on hold since last October.
\"It\'s a pretty mixed and messy report. It\'s strong on the surface, not quite as strong underneath,\" said Marc Levesque, chief fixed income strategist at TD Securities.
\"I think the fact that the unemployment rate dropped will not be lost on (the Bank of Canada). It suggests the labor market has tightened.\"
The bank left its benchmark overnight rate unchanged at 2.5 percent last month but made it clear that interest rates would rise over the coming 1-1/2 years as the economy approached full capacity. The bank announces its next rate decision on May 25.
David Ebata, managing analyst at Thomson IFR in Boston, said the political uncertainty in Ottawa over whether the minority Liberal government would survive meant the bank required plenty of reasons to raise rates in the current atmosphere.
\"The bank is going to need the dual number of higher inflation and higher employment to have the excuse to move. I think inflation will continue to be the number one factor driving interest rates in Canada,\" he said.
Statscan said the construction sector added 25,600 jobs in April and has grown by 9.3 percent since April 2004.
So far in 2005 overall employment growth has been due to self-employment and public sector employment while the number of private sector employees has fallen.
(Additional reporting by Ka Yan Ng in Toronto)
By David Ljunggren
Fri May 6, 7:52 AM ET
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada\'s economy created 29,300 jobs in April, almost twice the number expected, but the figure was overshadowed by further heavy losses in a manufacturing sector hit by the high Canadian dollar and cheap imports.
ADVERTISEMENT
Statistics Canada said on Friday that modest job growth meant the unemployment rate in April fell to 6.8 percent from 6.9 percent, its lowest level since December 2000. Analysts had forecast the rate would stay unchanged at 6.9 percent and that 15,000 jobs would be added.
The Canadian dollar hit a 10-day high on the strong headline figures while bond prices were down.
Statscan said the number of factory jobs dropped by 29,400 in April, bringing the sector\'s losses to 72,200 jobs since April 2004. It was the single largest monthly loss of manufacturing jobs since November 2001, when 34,200 positions vanished.
\"In the April Business Conditions Survey, manufacturers identified a number of impediments to production, including the high value of the Canadian dollar and inexpensive foreign imports,\" Statscan said in its daily bulletin.
Analysts said the figures were not as good as they looked but the drop in the jobless rate could influence the Bank of Canada as it decides whether to raise interest rates, which have been on hold since last October.
\"It\'s a pretty mixed and messy report. It\'s strong on the surface, not quite as strong underneath,\" said Marc Levesque, chief fixed income strategist at TD Securities.
\"I think the fact that the unemployment rate dropped will not be lost on (the Bank of Canada). It suggests the labor market has tightened.\"
The bank left its benchmark overnight rate unchanged at 2.5 percent last month but made it clear that interest rates would rise over the coming 1-1/2 years as the economy approached full capacity. The bank announces its next rate decision on May 25.
David Ebata, managing analyst at Thomson IFR in Boston, said the political uncertainty in Ottawa over whether the minority Liberal government would survive meant the bank required plenty of reasons to raise rates in the current atmosphere.
\"The bank is going to need the dual number of higher inflation and higher employment to have the excuse to move. I think inflation will continue to be the number one factor driving interest rates in Canada,\" he said.
Statscan said the construction sector added 25,600 jobs in April and has grown by 9.3 percent since April 2004.
So far in 2005 overall employment growth has been due to self-employment and public sector employment while the number of private sector employees has fallen.
(Additional reporting by Ka Yan Ng in Toronto)
Exodus: the great British migration
Source: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FQP/is_4699_133/ai_n6156974
Exodus: the great British migration; They go to France, Spain, Canada, New Zealand and, increasingly, eastern Europe. Britons, particularly the middle classes, are leaving in greater numbers than ever before. David Nicholson-Lord reports
New Statesman, August 2, 2004 by David Nicholson-Lord
Two or three years ago, everybody I met seemed to be thinking of moving to New Zealand. At the time, I put it down to the arrival on our cinema screens of Peter Jackson\'s The Lord of the Rings, with its ravishing depiction of South Island landscapes, and wondered if it was a passing fad. Then I got an airmail letter out of the blue from one of those sojourners, an old friend, who announced that he\'d actually done it--almost. He and his partner had moved to the eastern seaboard of Australia and, although it wasn\'t quite South Island, it did have environmental quality in abundance. \"I think the amount of space people have here, whether it\'s at home or on the beach, is one of the big bonuses ... people seem much happier and more relaxed as a result.\"
Most people in the UK could these days tell a similar story, of people they know who have moved \"out\"--wherever \"out\" might be--in search of a better life. And though it is conventional to decry such anecdotal evidence, condescension, in this case, would be misplaced. Demographics--the study of population, its growth and movements--is in a fundamental sense an attempt to capture in statistics the lives that anecdotes describe. And there is little doubt that such anecdotes embody something real, and worrying.
Take second homes, for example. People own them in some remarkably far-flung places--ski resorts in Canada, villas in the West Indies. These are not always very wealthy people; owning a second home is turning into a middle-class norm. Officially, there are 151,000 second homes in England and Wales--but they come a poor second to property owned abroad. The industry estimates that there are 750,000 homes in Spain owned by British nationals, roughly 500,000 in France, and many more in places such as Florida, Portugal, Mediterranean countries other than Spain, and, increasingly, eastern Europe. So at least 1.5 million British households--roughly 6 per cent of the total--have given up sufficiently on their \"normal\" lives to want to half-live somewhere else. And that is just those who can afford it.
But half-living somewhere may be only a stepping stone to moving there: some observers call it \"pre-emigrating\". Surveys recently have uncovered huge numbers of Britons who, given a free choice, would get out of the country. Separate polls by ICM and YouGov found that more than half would like to leave--the YouGov poll found that 55 per cent had \"seriously considered settling in another country\". A recent survey by the offshore bank Alliance & Leicester International and the Centre for Future Studies put the proportion of Britons \"considering moving abroad to work or live\" at a third. Based on these figures, the bank projects that by 2020 an extra six million British citizens--more than one-tenth of our current population--will be living or working abroad. Roughly four million of these will be people aged 50 and above--representing one in five of that age group.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
In historical terms, such figures would represent a huge population exodus--far bigger than that caused by the Irish potato famine in the 19th century, for example. Are they realistic? A projection--or, come to that, a pipe dream--is one thing. Getting off your backside and doing it is something else again. But getting off our backsides is what, it seems, more and more of us are doing.
Over the past dozen years or so, some remarkable changes have occurred in Britain\'s demography. London\'s long-standing population decline has halted, and the capital\'s \"recovery\" (in economic growth and numbers) appears to have accentuated the north-south divide. It also appears to have accelerated the metamorphosis of much of lowland England, south and east of a line from the Wash to the Bristol Channel, into a kind of infinitely greater London--a peri-urban zone where the landscape may look rural but the lifestyles, noise and congestion are metropolitan.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
At the same time, national population growth has taken off again, driven primarily by immigration and by the greater fertility of newly immigrant populations. Yet while most of the attention, regrettably or otherwise, has centred on immigration, the complementary emigration \"problem\" has been all but ignored. This is partly because, when you put the two together, Britain has more incomers than outgoers, and thus a net inflow of population. If everyone wants to come to the UK, we must be doing something right, surely? Yet this net inflow conceals a dramatic rise in the numbers of emigrants--and some significant changes in their make-up and destination.
In the early 1990s, incomers and outgoers were roughly in balance. Indeed, in 1992 and 1993 there was a net outflow of migrants. Since then, however, while the number of immigrants, using official figures, has nearly doubled, from 265,000 in 1993 to 513,000 in 2002, the number of emigrants has also increased, from 266,000 in 1993 to 359,000 in 2002. This last is the highest figure in the past two decades--and slightly higher per head of population than emigration from Ireland--and may well be the highest number ever.
Given that emigration is supposedly associated with economic failure and the government is forever telling us how successful Britain has become, this is something of a mystery--for the economically minded, at least. When you also note that, according to historical poll evidence, people are much keener to emigrate now than they were even during postwar rationing and the strife-torn 1970s, economic explanations start to falter. So do easy assumptions about globalisation, increased foreign travel, the proliferation of TV programmes showing us how to grapple with Provencal plumbers or Normandy notaires. These help to explain the pull, but not the push, factors.
Government statistics are not especially helpful in profiling the new emigrants. But they do tell us that increasing numbers were born in the UK, that they are getting older, that they include a growing proportion of the professional and managerial classes, that they are leaving for longer (four years or more), that a disproportionate number of them come from London and to a lesser extent the south-east, and that the fastest-growing destinations are Europe and the \"old\" Commonwealth--countries such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand. As to why they are leaving, 30 per cent mention work but 51 per cent give \"other\" reasons.
These are not hard to find. A survey in Emigrate magazine found that roughly three-quarters of potential emigrants think quality of life in Britain is deteriorating. The YouGov poll cited crime, council taxes, congested roads, lack of space. Eighty-five per cent thought Britain was \"grinding to a halt\". ICM added a few more reasons to be miserable: bad weather, long working hours, regional unemployment, high house prices. The Alliance & Leicester study found that the top reason for emigration was the search for a better quality of life, with work stress the main trigger, and destinations which place a \"greater value on leisure and lifestyle\" the most favoured. Among older people, the main reasons for moving abroad were climate and environment, pace of life, health, lower living costs, and \"social advantages\". What is also notable throughout such surveys is gloom and pessimism about Britain and the lack of attachment to the homeland.
You can draw a number of conclusions from such findings. One is that Britain\'s deregulated US-style economy, whatever its financial fruits, appears not to be delivering the goods in terms of well-being or happiness--a point made in a number of recent studies, most notably the New Economics Foundation\'s Chasing Progress. A second is the rise in both immigration and emigration since the early 1990s. Is there a causal link? The left might not like the idea, but it may be that one of the things against which people are voting with their feet is enforced multiculturalism--a possibility given extra credence by the fact that, in 2002, more than half of in-migrants to Britain were making for London and the south-east, while 47 per cent of out-migrants were leaving London and the south-east.
A third is that such large population shifts may presage sea changes in British society. It is safe to assume, for instance, that although many of the immigrants to the UK will be younger people keen to improve their economic lot, many of the emigrants will be less concerned with worldly goods: they may already have enough to survive. Over the past two decades, various labels have been invented to describe such people: down-shifters, \"post-materialists\"--in short, people who are nearing the summit of what the American psychologist Abraham Maslow called the hierarchy of needs, and are increasingly in search of personal and spiritual fulfilment. And if that is so, then the slow substitution of one lot for another over the next two decades could make Britain an altogether harder-edged place--more \"dynamic\", maybe, but also more aggressive, competitive and stressful. And because crime is largely a phenomenon of youth, it may also be more violent, or at least criminal.
Trying to deconstruct portfolio terms such as \"quality of life\" is notoriously difficult. So is finding one cause for a phenomenon into which several other apparent causes can be subsumed. Yet it is possible we have been here before. The demographic feature that more than any other has redrawn the postwar map of Britain is flight from the cities--counter-urbanisation. Like Britain\'s new wave of emigration, this was ascribed to a search for quality of life, but the statistical measures that described it most accurately were crowding and density. The bigger and more crowded a place, in other words, the faster it lost population.
Are Britain\'s new emigrants the counter-urbanisers of the third millennium? Such an explanation would certainly fit major features of the outflow--the popularity of \"spacious\" destination countries, and the general perception, confirmed in surveys, of an overcrowded homeland. As, indeed, by international measures, it is--lowland England is probably more densely settled than any other area of comparable size in the developed world. Moreover, many of the policies the government seems set on--deregulated economic competitiveness; the promotion of immigration as a source of cheap labour and a way of filling vacancies; \"predict and provide\" policies on housing, roads, air travel--will only make that worse, creating an environment which is good for economic growth but bad for people.
Bad enough to make them want to get out.
Rosie Millard
David Nicholson-Lord\'s Green Cities--And Why We Need Them (2003) is published by the New Economics Foundation
Source: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FQP/is_4699_133/ai_n6156974
Exodus: the great British migration; They go to France, Spain, Canada, New Zealand and, increasingly, eastern Europe. Britons, particularly the middle classes, are leaving in greater numbers than ever before. David Nicholson-Lord reports
New Statesman, August 2, 2004 by David Nicholson-Lord
Two or three years ago, everybody I met seemed to be thinking of moving to New Zealand. At the time, I put it down to the arrival on our cinema screens of Peter Jackson\'s The Lord of the Rings, with its ravishing depiction of South Island landscapes, and wondered if it was a passing fad. Then I got an airmail letter out of the blue from one of those sojourners, an old friend, who announced that he\'d actually done it--almost. He and his partner had moved to the eastern seaboard of Australia and, although it wasn\'t quite South Island, it did have environmental quality in abundance. \"I think the amount of space people have here, whether it\'s at home or on the beach, is one of the big bonuses ... people seem much happier and more relaxed as a result.\"
Most people in the UK could these days tell a similar story, of people they know who have moved \"out\"--wherever \"out\" might be--in search of a better life. And though it is conventional to decry such anecdotal evidence, condescension, in this case, would be misplaced. Demographics--the study of population, its growth and movements--is in a fundamental sense an attempt to capture in statistics the lives that anecdotes describe. And there is little doubt that such anecdotes embody something real, and worrying.
Take second homes, for example. People own them in some remarkably far-flung places--ski resorts in Canada, villas in the West Indies. These are not always very wealthy people; owning a second home is turning into a middle-class norm. Officially, there are 151,000 second homes in England and Wales--but they come a poor second to property owned abroad. The industry estimates that there are 750,000 homes in Spain owned by British nationals, roughly 500,000 in France, and many more in places such as Florida, Portugal, Mediterranean countries other than Spain, and, increasingly, eastern Europe. So at least 1.5 million British households--roughly 6 per cent of the total--have given up sufficiently on their \"normal\" lives to want to half-live somewhere else. And that is just those who can afford it.
But half-living somewhere may be only a stepping stone to moving there: some observers call it \"pre-emigrating\". Surveys recently have uncovered huge numbers of Britons who, given a free choice, would get out of the country. Separate polls by ICM and YouGov found that more than half would like to leave--the YouGov poll found that 55 per cent had \"seriously considered settling in another country\". A recent survey by the offshore bank Alliance & Leicester International and the Centre for Future Studies put the proportion of Britons \"considering moving abroad to work or live\" at a third. Based on these figures, the bank projects that by 2020 an extra six million British citizens--more than one-tenth of our current population--will be living or working abroad. Roughly four million of these will be people aged 50 and above--representing one in five of that age group.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
In historical terms, such figures would represent a huge population exodus--far bigger than that caused by the Irish potato famine in the 19th century, for example. Are they realistic? A projection--or, come to that, a pipe dream--is one thing. Getting off your backside and doing it is something else again. But getting off our backsides is what, it seems, more and more of us are doing.
Over the past dozen years or so, some remarkable changes have occurred in Britain\'s demography. London\'s long-standing population decline has halted, and the capital\'s \"recovery\" (in economic growth and numbers) appears to have accentuated the north-south divide. It also appears to have accelerated the metamorphosis of much of lowland England, south and east of a line from the Wash to the Bristol Channel, into a kind of infinitely greater London--a peri-urban zone where the landscape may look rural but the lifestyles, noise and congestion are metropolitan.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
At the same time, national population growth has taken off again, driven primarily by immigration and by the greater fertility of newly immigrant populations. Yet while most of the attention, regrettably or otherwise, has centred on immigration, the complementary emigration \"problem\" has been all but ignored. This is partly because, when you put the two together, Britain has more incomers than outgoers, and thus a net inflow of population. If everyone wants to come to the UK, we must be doing something right, surely? Yet this net inflow conceals a dramatic rise in the numbers of emigrants--and some significant changes in their make-up and destination.
In the early 1990s, incomers and outgoers were roughly in balance. Indeed, in 1992 and 1993 there was a net outflow of migrants. Since then, however, while the number of immigrants, using official figures, has nearly doubled, from 265,000 in 1993 to 513,000 in 2002, the number of emigrants has also increased, from 266,000 in 1993 to 359,000 in 2002. This last is the highest figure in the past two decades--and slightly higher per head of population than emigration from Ireland--and may well be the highest number ever.
Given that emigration is supposedly associated with economic failure and the government is forever telling us how successful Britain has become, this is something of a mystery--for the economically minded, at least. When you also note that, according to historical poll evidence, people are much keener to emigrate now than they were even during postwar rationing and the strife-torn 1970s, economic explanations start to falter. So do easy assumptions about globalisation, increased foreign travel, the proliferation of TV programmes showing us how to grapple with Provencal plumbers or Normandy notaires. These help to explain the pull, but not the push, factors.
Government statistics are not especially helpful in profiling the new emigrants. But they do tell us that increasing numbers were born in the UK, that they are getting older, that they include a growing proportion of the professional and managerial classes, that they are leaving for longer (four years or more), that a disproportionate number of them come from London and to a lesser extent the south-east, and that the fastest-growing destinations are Europe and the \"old\" Commonwealth--countries such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand. As to why they are leaving, 30 per cent mention work but 51 per cent give \"other\" reasons.
These are not hard to find. A survey in Emigrate magazine found that roughly three-quarters of potential emigrants think quality of life in Britain is deteriorating. The YouGov poll cited crime, council taxes, congested roads, lack of space. Eighty-five per cent thought Britain was \"grinding to a halt\". ICM added a few more reasons to be miserable: bad weather, long working hours, regional unemployment, high house prices. The Alliance & Leicester study found that the top reason for emigration was the search for a better quality of life, with work stress the main trigger, and destinations which place a \"greater value on leisure and lifestyle\" the most favoured. Among older people, the main reasons for moving abroad were climate and environment, pace of life, health, lower living costs, and \"social advantages\". What is also notable throughout such surveys is gloom and pessimism about Britain and the lack of attachment to the homeland.
You can draw a number of conclusions from such findings. One is that Britain\'s deregulated US-style economy, whatever its financial fruits, appears not to be delivering the goods in terms of well-being or happiness--a point made in a number of recent studies, most notably the New Economics Foundation\'s Chasing Progress. A second is the rise in both immigration and emigration since the early 1990s. Is there a causal link? The left might not like the idea, but it may be that one of the things against which people are voting with their feet is enforced multiculturalism--a possibility given extra credence by the fact that, in 2002, more than half of in-migrants to Britain were making for London and the south-east, while 47 per cent of out-migrants were leaving London and the south-east.
A third is that such large population shifts may presage sea changes in British society. It is safe to assume, for instance, that although many of the immigrants to the UK will be younger people keen to improve their economic lot, many of the emigrants will be less concerned with worldly goods: they may already have enough to survive. Over the past two decades, various labels have been invented to describe such people: down-shifters, \"post-materialists\"--in short, people who are nearing the summit of what the American psychologist Abraham Maslow called the hierarchy of needs, and are increasingly in search of personal and spiritual fulfilment. And if that is so, then the slow substitution of one lot for another over the next two decades could make Britain an altogether harder-edged place--more \"dynamic\", maybe, but also more aggressive, competitive and stressful. And because crime is largely a phenomenon of youth, it may also be more violent, or at least criminal.
Trying to deconstruct portfolio terms such as \"quality of life\" is notoriously difficult. So is finding one cause for a phenomenon into which several other apparent causes can be subsumed. Yet it is possible we have been here before. The demographic feature that more than any other has redrawn the postwar map of Britain is flight from the cities--counter-urbanisation. Like Britain\'s new wave of emigration, this was ascribed to a search for quality of life, but the statistical measures that described it most accurately were crowding and density. The bigger and more crowded a place, in other words, the faster it lost population.
Are Britain\'s new emigrants the counter-urbanisers of the third millennium? Such an explanation would certainly fit major features of the outflow--the popularity of \"spacious\" destination countries, and the general perception, confirmed in surveys, of an overcrowded homeland. As, indeed, by international measures, it is--lowland England is probably more densely settled than any other area of comparable size in the developed world. Moreover, many of the policies the government seems set on--deregulated economic competitiveness; the promotion of immigration as a source of cheap labour and a way of filling vacancies; \"predict and provide\" policies on housing, roads, air travel--will only make that worse, creating an environment which is good for economic growth but bad for people.
Bad enough to make them want to get out.
Rosie Millard
David Nicholson-Lord\'s Green Cities--And Why We Need Them (2003) is published by the New Economics Foundation
Destination Canada: Immigration Debates and Issues
Source: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3668/is_200404/ai_n9376157
Destination Canada: Immigration Debates and Issues
International Migration Review, The, Spring 2004 by Fong, Eric
Destination Canada: Immigration Debates and Issues. By Peter S. Li. Oxford University Press.
This book is about immigration in Canada, an important topic for a country with a long history of immigration. With the more recent influx of immigrants from non-European countries, immigration has generated considerable debate in Canada. This book addresses issues raised in the debate and provides a perspective on these issues based on existing literature.
The discussion begins with a review of Canadian social history. Li reminds readers that the history of Canada is closely linked with immigration. Immigration has shaped institutional development and demographic changes throughout the development of the country. He notes that the drastic changes in immigration policies after the Second World War set the stage for the recent influx of non-European immigrants that has led to a set of unique issues related to this new wave of immigration.
The first issue that Li addresses is the relationship between the Canadian population and immigration. Given that Canada has experienced a low fertility rate and a growing elderly population, Li argues that immigration plays a crucial role in maintaining the growth of the Canadian population. Although some have argued that the Canadian economy has transformed into one that is knowledge based and does not require substantial population, Li argues that technological advancement cannot maintain Canada as an economic power if its population declines. In addition, some have said that Canada\'s capacity for absorbing immigrants is limited. Li suggests that both the density of population and the ratio of immigrants to native born remains low, which suggests that the country is far from its capacity limit.
The second issue that Li discusses is the economic consequences of immigration. After reviewing the literature, Li concludes that research findings do not support the notion that immigration has negative consequences for the Canadian economy. Instead, they show that the Canadian economy has benefited from immigration. Results have indicated that the earnings of immigrants are comparable to those of native-born Canadians. However, the results also point out that earnings are lower for immigrants when various factors are controlled. The patterns reveal that immigrants may face unequal opportunities in the labor market. These unequal opportunities are not simply due to differences in human capital; inequality stems from \"differences in gender, race, immigration status, and types of credentials\" (p. 122).
The third immigration issue explored in the hook is diversity. As the Canadian population has become more diversified, largely due to recent immigration from nonEuropean countries, immigrant adjustment has become an issue. Li contends that the debate stems from the adjustment of a large proportion of non-European immigrants to a country with established European traditions. Drawing from research findings, Li argues that, in the long run, immigrants integrate to Canadian society in various aspects. He also refutes the argument that mtilticulturalist policies create segregation of cultural and linguistic groups, citing significant documentation of patterns of gradual integration of immigrants into thewider society and the rapid loss of homeland language in succeeding generations.
Since a large number of immigrants settle in cities, the impact of immigration on Canadian cities can be substantial. Li acknowledges that the presence of large numbers of immigrants can increase residential concentration and create pressure on local school systems such that quality may be compromised. He suggests that racial residential segregation may increase, but that it is related to various factors beyond immigration. In addition, he argues that the concerns of the school system seem partly to be about the racial origin of immigrants and affluent consumption patterns of wealthy immigrant groups. From the literature, he concludes that immigration benefits the city. It provides forces of growth, intcrnationalizes cities, and facilitates social change.
At the end of the discussion, Li argues that the immigration debate in Canada should be understood within the context of globalization. Clobalization facilitates the migration of highly skilled workers and of refugees seeking asylum. Globalization also shapes the discussion of how immigration benefits Canada.
I found the book informative. It provides updated information and a summary of major debates in the area of immigration. The book is especially useful for graduate students and those who want to learn more about immigration in Canada.
ERIC FONG
University of Toronto
Copyright Center for Migration Studies Spring 2004
Source: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3668/is_200404/ai_n9376157
Destination Canada: Immigration Debates and Issues
International Migration Review, The, Spring 2004 by Fong, Eric
Destination Canada: Immigration Debates and Issues. By Peter S. Li. Oxford University Press.
This book is about immigration in Canada, an important topic for a country with a long history of immigration. With the more recent influx of immigrants from non-European countries, immigration has generated considerable debate in Canada. This book addresses issues raised in the debate and provides a perspective on these issues based on existing literature.
The discussion begins with a review of Canadian social history. Li reminds readers that the history of Canada is closely linked with immigration. Immigration has shaped institutional development and demographic changes throughout the development of the country. He notes that the drastic changes in immigration policies after the Second World War set the stage for the recent influx of non-European immigrants that has led to a set of unique issues related to this new wave of immigration.
The first issue that Li addresses is the relationship between the Canadian population and immigration. Given that Canada has experienced a low fertility rate and a growing elderly population, Li argues that immigration plays a crucial role in maintaining the growth of the Canadian population. Although some have argued that the Canadian economy has transformed into one that is knowledge based and does not require substantial population, Li argues that technological advancement cannot maintain Canada as an economic power if its population declines. In addition, some have said that Canada\'s capacity for absorbing immigrants is limited. Li suggests that both the density of population and the ratio of immigrants to native born remains low, which suggests that the country is far from its capacity limit.
The second issue that Li discusses is the economic consequences of immigration. After reviewing the literature, Li concludes that research findings do not support the notion that immigration has negative consequences for the Canadian economy. Instead, they show that the Canadian economy has benefited from immigration. Results have indicated that the earnings of immigrants are comparable to those of native-born Canadians. However, the results also point out that earnings are lower for immigrants when various factors are controlled. The patterns reveal that immigrants may face unequal opportunities in the labor market. These unequal opportunities are not simply due to differences in human capital; inequality stems from \"differences in gender, race, immigration status, and types of credentials\" (p. 122).
The third immigration issue explored in the hook is diversity. As the Canadian population has become more diversified, largely due to recent immigration from nonEuropean countries, immigrant adjustment has become an issue. Li contends that the debate stems from the adjustment of a large proportion of non-European immigrants to a country with established European traditions. Drawing from research findings, Li argues that, in the long run, immigrants integrate to Canadian society in various aspects. He also refutes the argument that mtilticulturalist policies create segregation of cultural and linguistic groups, citing significant documentation of patterns of gradual integration of immigrants into thewider society and the rapid loss of homeland language in succeeding generations.
Since a large number of immigrants settle in cities, the impact of immigration on Canadian cities can be substantial. Li acknowledges that the presence of large numbers of immigrants can increase residential concentration and create pressure on local school systems such that quality may be compromised. He suggests that racial residential segregation may increase, but that it is related to various factors beyond immigration. In addition, he argues that the concerns of the school system seem partly to be about the racial origin of immigrants and affluent consumption patterns of wealthy immigrant groups. From the literature, he concludes that immigration benefits the city. It provides forces of growth, intcrnationalizes cities, and facilitates social change.
At the end of the discussion, Li argues that the immigration debate in Canada should be understood within the context of globalization. Clobalization facilitates the migration of highly skilled workers and of refugees seeking asylum. Globalization also shapes the discussion of how immigration benefits Canada.
I found the book informative. It provides updated information and a summary of major debates in the area of immigration. The book is especially useful for graduate students and those who want to learn more about immigration in Canada.
ERIC FONG
University of Toronto
Copyright Center for Migration Studies Spring 2004
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