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Abstract
The paper develops a socio‐economic profile of the Indo‐Canadian diaspora, arguably one of the largest Indian diaspora in the world and the second largest immigrant group in Canada, by analyzing landing records, tax data, and census and micro data files. The study suggests that Indian immigrants in Canada can be viewed as forming two broad streams: those who achieve incremental upward mobility with time in the country; and, those who do not experience much upward mobility even after residing in the country for many years. In particular, it examines the key determinants of the success of high‐income earners. The paper compares the Indo‐Canadian economic experience with that of the general Canadian population as well as other immigrants, principally Chinese immigrants. The paper argues that Canada has not benefited from the economic edge Indian and other transnational professionals and entrepreneurs offer.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Statistics Canada for preparing special IMDB tabulations. This paper is derived from the authors’ report entitled ‘Indian Immigrants in Canada: The Shades of Economic Integration’ prepared for the POA Foundation, which was funded by grants from the POA Foundation and Ryerson University. Special thanks go to the anonymous referees for their constructive and helpful comments.
Notes
1. According to Statistics Canada, Visible minorities are defined based on the Employment Equity Act definition as persons, other than Aboriginal peoples, who are non‐Caucasian in race or non‐white in colour. They include Chinese, South Asian, Black, Filipino, Latin American, Southeast Asian, Arab, West Asian, Japanese, Korean, other visible minorities and multiple visible minorities.
2. According to Statistics Canada, the term ‘immigrant’ applies to a person who has been granted the right to permanently live in Canada by immigration authorities. It usually applies to persons born outside Canada, but may also apply to persons born inside Canada to parents who are foreign nationals. Similarly, some persons who are Canadian by birth were born outside Canada to Canadian parents. Once a person has been accorded immigrant status, it becomes a lifelong attribute as long as the person lives in Canada.
3. The last year available for tax file data corresponding with the LIDS at the time of the study was 2003.
4. The most recent microdata files available to the researchers are 2001 PUMF.
5. In 1914, 376 passengers from India arrived in Vancouver aboard the Komagata Maru steamship and were denied entry into Canada. After being detained for almost two months in conditions of near starvation, the passengers were ordered to return to India, except for 24 passengers who were given permission to stay in Canada. The Komagata Maru and its passengers left Canadian waters on 23 July 1914. Upon arrival back in India, many of these passengers were subsequently killed and imprisoned (Johnston Citation1979).
6. The points system, pioneered by Canada in the 1960s, favours highly skilled immigrants, by assigning points for education and work experience and accepting those who earn high scores. Under the current points system, 67 points on a 100‐point test is a passing score. In addition to education and work experience, aspiring immigrants earn high points for their command of languages and for being 21 to 49 years old.
7. Murphy et al. (Citation2007) provides nationwide data for this year, which is used as a baseline for comparison.
8. Murphy et al. (Citation2007) separate the high‐income category into groups that have income within the top 5% of all reported incomes: including the top 5%, the top 1%, the top 0.1%, and the top 0.01% of incomes. Their baseline definition of ‘high‐income’ for an individual – that is, having an income within the top 5% – was calculated at Can$89,000, based on 2004 values. Because of data limits in the IMDB, an approximate value of Can$80,000 was chosen for the highest income category in 2004. The gap is likely to be even smaller than it may appear owing to inflation.
9. However, the IMDB reports only on immigrants and therefore provides no baseline characteristics of Canadians in general.
10. The later landing cohorts were not included, because they have relatively small numbers of high‐income earners that do not permit the cross‐tabulation of the three variables.
11. Ayedemir (Citation2003) argues that cohorts of immigrants arriving during recessionary periods suffer ‘economic scarring’ that slows their economic success.
12. Low incomes are defined by the family income Low Income Cut‐off figure for 2000 of about Can$32,000 for a four person household in a large urban centre (Lee Citation2000).
13. The LSIC is Statistics Canada’s survey, which contains in‐depth information on the settlement experiences of a sample of immigrants who officially landed in Canada between 2000 and 2001. Of specific relevance to the question of high‐income Indian immigrants, the LSIC includes information on family wealth brought with immigrants to Canada as well as generated during the examined years of stay in the country. However, as Mendez et al. (Citation2006) note, there are significant limitations in the LSIC. First, it has a small sample size (compared to the census), which limits statistical study at fine levels of disaggregation and geographic scale. Therefore, the analysis of this data is limited to the experiences of South Asian immigrants in general, instead of Indian‐born immigrants. A second important limitation is that income and earnings figures in the LSIC may be significantly under‐reported (Statistics Canada Citation2005).