Migration

Guatemalans and other Central Americans constitute the most recent group of Latin American immigrants. In 1979, after the outbreak of civil war and severe repression in El Salvador, Salvadorean immigrants began to arrive in Canada, and they were soon joined by Guatemalans, who were compelled to leave their homeland primarily because of political violence, and only secondarily in search of better economic opportunities. Since 1983 half of all the Guatemalan immigrants to Canada each year have been political refugees.

Most Guatemalans in Canada are ladinos. Over 60 percent were between the ages of fifteen and forty-four at the time of migration. Most of the remaining immigrants have been younger than fifteen. In relation to the rural, illiterate, and poor population they leave behind, the migrants’ socio-economic background is relatively high. Only about 1 percent of the population in Guatemala has university degrees, but 3.8 percent of the Guatemalans who immigrated to Canada as refugees between 1980 and 1987 came with university degrees. Although not a great deal is known about the pre-migration occupations of the Guatemalans in Canada, in a sample of Guatemalans surveyed in Montreal in 1983, 37 percent had worked in a professional, technical, or administrative capacity before coming to Canada and 46 percent had worked in white-collar jobs. Most came from urban settings in Guatemala. These findings are particularly striking since only 41 percent of Guatemalan society is urbanized and most of Guatemala’s refugees are from rural, indigenous communities.

The gender composition of Guatemalan immigrants up to 1987 may reflect, in part, the selection process of Canadian officials in that period. There are almost equal numbers of men and women in the total population of Guatemalan immigrants to Canada up to the present. In the “refugee” category, however, men outnumbered women by 23 percent from 1980 to 1987. Many women who could have qualified as refugees were undoubtedly admitted to Canada as the family members of Guatemalans already in Canada. But the fact that men were even more over-represented among conventional refugees, and less so among those who were privately sponsored, suggests that Canadian officials may have tended to choose men rather than women where there were large numbers of applicants, as in the refugee camps in the countries in which Guatemalans first sought asylum.

Official figures on the number of Guatemalans in Canada vary. According to the 1991 Canadian census, 4,890 reported that they were entirely (3,855) or partly (1,035) Guatemalan by ethnic origin. But 8,920 people indicated that their country of birth was Guatemala. Clearly many Guatemalan-born Canadians have identified themselves with another ethnic group. According to the annual immigration statistics collected by the Canadian government, 10,252 Guatemalans immigrated to Canada from 1974 to 1991, and 3,454 Guatemalans came between January 1992 and March 1994, for a total of 13,700. Several Guatemalans in Canada believe that all the official figures underestimate their real numbers. They point out that numerous refugee claimants reside in Canada while they await determination of their status. Such people would be excluded from both the census data and the annual immigration data.