Conclusion

Do immigrants take jobs from Canadians? Are they a drain on the country’s welfare system? These questions have been asked with varying degrees of intensity since the turn of the century. But in recent years the debate has gained momentum, in part because of the federal government’s commitment to large-scale immigration during an economic recession. Most scholarly studies, however, have concluded that there is little evidence that immigrants significantly displace non-immigrants from jobs across the economy as a whole.

Ironically, another dimension of the contemporary debate over the status of immigrant workers has been their labour-market participation. Most studies have concluded that, in general, immigrants have a higher level of employment than the Canadian-born, although the country of origin and the length of residence are significant factors in determining job levels, as is the concentration of recent immigrants in Canada’s metropolitan centres, where overall employment is relatively high. Other surveys have demonstrated, however, that job opportunities and earnings can often be adversely affected by discrimination, especially during the first years in Canada.

This country’s rejection of its racist immigration legacy after 1966 has greatly affected the evolving character of Canadian society. So too has its commitment to multiculturalism in 1971. The inclusion of a continuing and substantial obligation to refugees in the Immigration Act of 1976 was another landmark. Nor should the extension of the welfare state to newcomers be minimized. These policies have gone far to differentiate contemporary Canadian attitudes towards immigrants, especially non-Europeans, from the views held in earlier decades.