Arrival and Settlement

The dual nature of Brazilian immigration is important in understanding the structure of the community in Canada. The original “regular” immigrants came as the families of Canadians working with firms in Brazil, members of families fragmented by World War II, or individuals seeking prosperity in North America. Because of the economic links between Toronto and Brazil, these people tended to settle in southern Ontario, although some chose other large cities. Women made up a large percentage of early immigrants since the background and education important for entry were not limited to men in Brazil. According to Canadian immigration statistics, until 1975 an average of 45 percent of Brazilian immigrants were women. This proportion increased to 53.2 percent by 1986, but it decreased to 49.6 percent after the exodus of 1987. Of the approximately 15,000 legal immigrants into Canada in this period, the majority (54 percent) were dependants, mostly wives and children, of Canadian citizens or landed immigrants.

A few Brazilian immigrants (158 by official statistics) have settled in rural areas and established themselves in agriculture, almost all of these having arrived before 1981. The nature of relations between the two countries has limited rural migration, however. Established Brazilian farmers and ranchers are not likely to move to a colder climate, and impoverished peasants, who probably would be willing to settle in rural Canada, do not have the resources to leave or to buy land and equipment, even if the Canadian government would admit them. Almost all Brazilian migration, like that from the rest of Latin America, has been urban, the preferred location has been southern Ontario, and the preferred city Toronto. The wave of younger Brazilians into Canada since the 1980s has accentuated this pattern, as can be seen from Table 1.

Most legal Brazilian immigrants have been people

with the education and skills needed to satisfy Canadian immigration requirements. The group who entered illegally in the late 1980s was more varied. A few were members of the Brazilian underclass — impoverished favela dwellers from the cities and peasants from the countryside — and a number were sophisticated and well-educated individuals with respectable professions in Brazil, among them doctors, teachers, administrators, shopowners, and small landholders. But the majority were from working-or lower-middle-class backgrounds, such as factory workers, bank clerks, secretaries, and the self-employed. The majority of these have been able to legitimize their status in Canada.

No one knows how many Brazilians were involved in the immigrant flood of the late 1980s nor how many returned to the homeland. The 1991 Canadian census reports 2,520 individuals of wholly Brazilian origin and another 2,325 who describe Brazilian as one of their ethnic origins, for a total of 4,845. This figure can be taken as an official minimum and corresponds to Brazilian consular estimates. But in the 1980s and 1990s a large number of younger Brazilians established families in Toronto. The local newspaper Abacaxi Times estimated that the total number of Brazilians living in Toronto in the 1990s was about 9,000. Probably an equal number of legal immigrants entered Ontario to that date. (The total for Canada was 14,976.) When refugee claimants and illegals are added, the total in Ontario alone may approach 12,000, with a few thousand more in Quebec and British Columbia; there are smaller groups scattered across the country. New immigrants have continued to enter the country, but at a much slower pace than the previous decade.