1999/2000 PCERII Funded Research Abstract

There are two central policy questions of immigration: How many and what type of immigrants should Canada accept? This project attempts to answer the second question of "what type", with the objective of providing policy options regarding the economic outcomes of having a different mix of independent immigrants, family immigrants and refugees. The literature has been largely silent on this question, despite much effort invested into gauging the net value of immigrants from the vantage point of the native-born population. In this study, immigrant class composition is regarded as a macro-level variable characterizing each entry cohort. This study is to see how changing this composition produces differences in the quality and performance of immigrants in Canada. Data from the Landed Immigrant Data System will be used to construct the compositional profiles of entry cohorts. The data will be merged with other data sets to enable the research team to assess the effects of composition on economic outcomes. Members of the research team will each approach the same question using different methodology and combination of data set. The data sets used include: SLID, IMDB, microdata from 1971, 1981, 1986, 1991, and 1996 Census of Canada. The result of this project is policy relevant and academically important in that it provides a concrete basis of assessing the implication of having different mixes of immigrant class.