Question content, Scope, Purpose

Hi everyone,

I'd like to run with Cyrille's idea for a moment, and introduce some demographic figures on the labour market intention, occupation and skill level of permanent residents taken from previous surveying data on the 'Citizenship and Immigration Canada' web page, found here: link title. Although this particular page doesn't explicitly illustrate the income levels of immigrants as per category of occupation and skill level, its probably fair to assume the 'higher skilled' and 'professional' categories, positively correlate with higher levels of income and vise-versa for lesser trained or educated occupations.

With the relative levels of permanent residents categorized in a descending order, the basic time-series chart starts with managerial, then professional, skilled and technical, clerical, and labourers etc. essentially ending with 'unskilled' or 'new worker' immigrants, and those not intending to work. A noticeable pattern emerges (notwithstanding any exceptions) where over each year, numbers of permanent residents who belong to a 'higher skilled' or 'professional' category proportionally rise and fall depending on overall immigration trends, but nevertheless remain at much higher levels. That in mind, there's probably something to be said for why this would occur, perhaps the relationship is causal where, those whom belong to a higher bracket are either provided with greater opportunity to settle into Canada, or even that they just may be more cognizant of the many programs available to all immigrants in general.

However, another prevalent trend (found elsewhere on the government site) suggests that, regardless of the skill level or type of occupation prior to successfully achieving permanent residence, immigrant workers still tend to shift from higher-trained positions to that of lower paid, less skilled occupations. Whether this could be a consequence from the immigrant not taking advantage of government programs in the following months/years after successfully achieving permanent resident status or otherwise, it would appear this is an unfortunate pattern for both skilled and unskilled immigrants alike. There could be a variety of explanations for this, making it easy to loose sight in developing a coherent, testable hypothesis, but it could be worth while to explore this phenomenon a little more.

Overall, I think everyone's, including Cyrille's ideas are excellent contributions to our discussion, and I also think it could be beneficial to take into account the various social/economic profiles of the surveying sample in addition to their involvement in government settlement programs. AlexVanSeters 16:39, 30 January 2011 (PST)