Notes
- While I must remain responsible for the generalizations necessary in this kind of preliminary comparison, the discussion of the Canadian resettlement system has benefited greatly from the comments, mostly during a brief trip to Canada in 1985, of C Michael Lanphier, C. Taylor, B. D. Hazan, Gertrud Neuwirth, and Brian Bell. A subsequent meeting with Mietka Zieba in Oxford provided a better sense of the provincial variations in Canadian resettlement.
- There is a very extensive published literature on refugee resettlement in Canada, with particularly good overviews provided by two volumes developed under the auspices of the Canadian Asian Studies Association: Elliot L. Tepper, ed., Southeast Asian Exodus: From Tradition to Resettlement (Ottawa: Canadian Asian Studies Association, 1980), and Kwok B. Chan and Doreen Marie Indra, eds., Uprooting, Loss and Adaptation: The Resettlement of Indochinese Refugees in Canada (Ottawa: Canadian Public Health Association, 1987). This last volume includes a valuable bibliography.
- Other useful sources on Canada, not otherwise referenced in this article, include Howard Adelman, ed., The Indochinese Refugee Movement: The Canadian Experience (Toronto: Operation Lifeline,1980); Richard Nann, Phyllis Johnson, and Morton Beiser, eds., Refugee Resettlement: Southeast Asians in Transition (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1984); Louis-Jacques Dorais, Lise Pilon-Le, and Nguyen Huy, “The Survival of the Vietnamese Language in Quebec,” Vietnam Forum 6 (1985): 220–238; C. Michael Lanphier, “Canada's Response to Refugees,” International Migration Review 15 (1981): 113–130; C. Michael Lanphier, “Refugee Resettlement: Models in Action,” International Migration Review 17 (1983): 4–33; Gertrud Neuwirth and Lynn Clark, “Indochinese Refugees in Canada: Sponsorship and Adjustment,” International Migration Review 15 (1981): 131–140; and Nguyen San Duy, “Mental Health Services for Refugees and Immigrants in Canada, in Tom C. Owan, ed., Southeast Asian Mental Health: Treatment, Prevention, Services, Training, and Research (Washington: National Institute of Mental Health, 1984), 261–281. A useful overview of Asian immigration to Canada is provided by Daniel Kubat, “Asian Immigrants to Canada,” in James T. Fawcett and Benjamin V. Carino, eds., Pacific Bridges: The New Immigration from Asia and the Pacific Islands (New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1986), 229–245.
- The extent to which Southeast Asian refugees were the major arriving refugee group also varied between the two countries. For the United States, Southeast Asian refugees remained the overwhelming majority (about three-fourths) of all refugees until the very late 1980s and the increased arrival of Soviet Jews and Armenians. For Canada, Southeast Asian refugees became a minority of refugees by 1982—although a significant one at about a third of the total. These proportions, however, partially reflect the greater use by Canada of normal immigration procedures for refugees from Southeast Asia.
- Because of differing data collection and coding procedures, it is difficult to directly compare the social and economic characteristics of the refugees arriving in the United States and Canada. The differences do not seem sufficient to account for subsequent differences in economic and social situation. It is worth noting, however, the extent to which the Vietnamese national origin population in Canada is an ethnic Chinese one. This is far less the case in the United States.
- See Martin Lubin, ed., “Public Policy, Canada, and the United States,” Policy Studies Journal 14 (1986): 555–659; SRI International, Alternative Approaches to Refugee Resettlement (Menlo Park, California: SRI International 1981); Julia V. Taft, Canadian Refugee Resettlement: An Analysis of its Applicability to the United States (Washington: U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1982); and Julia V. Taft, David S. North, and David A. Ford, Refugee Resettlement in the U.S.: Time for a New Focus (Washington: New TransCentury Foundation, 1979).
- See DPA Consulting, Emluation of the Indochinese Refugee Group Sponsorship Program (Ottawa: Program Evaluation Branch, Employment and Immigration, 1982).
- For example, data from the United States suggest very frequent use of English language training by refugees, with about three out of four refugee adults having attended at some time during their early years in the United States, and about one in two first-year arrivals actually in training at any given point in time. Canadian survey data show even higher levels: about three out of four at some point during their first two years in the country. Use of other kinds of education and training is lower—but still impressive—in both countries. See David W. Haines, The Pursuit of English and Self-Sufficiency,” Journal of Refugee Studies 1 (1988): 195–213; and Gertrud Neuwirth, Gilles Grenier, John Devries, and Wendy Watkins, Southeast Asian Refugee Study: A Report on the Three Year Study of the Social and Economic Adaptation of Southeast Asian Refugees to Life in Canada, 1981–1983 (Ottawa: Carleton University, 1985).
- For both the overall Canadian situation and some of the variation by province and city, see Neuwirth, et. al. Southeast Asian Refugee Study; Employment and Immigration Canada, Indochinese Refugees: The Canadian Response, 1979 and 1980(Ottawa: Carleton University, 1982); T. J. Samuel, “Economic Adaptation of Indochinese Refugees in Canada,” in Chan and Indra, Uprooting, Loss and Adaptation, 65–75; Gilles Deschamps, “Economic Adaptation of Indochinese Refugees in Quebec,” in Chan and Indra, Uprooting, Loss and Adaptation, 97–115; Norman Buchignani, “The Economic Adaptation of Southeast Asian Refugees in Canada,” in Tepper, Southeast Asian Exodus, 191–204; and Alberta Manpower Planning Secretariat, The Economic Adaptation of Vietnamese Refugees in Alberta: 1979–1984 (Alberta, 1984). For overviews of the contrasting U.S data, see David W. Haines, “Patterns in Southeast Asian Refugee Employment: A Reappraisal of the Existing Research,” Ethnic Groups 7 (1987): 39–63; and Haines, ed., Refugees as Immigrants: Cambodians, Laotians, and Vietnamese in America (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowan and Littlefield, 1989).
- Employment and Immigration Canada reports a total cost for privately sponsored refugees of $2,663 versus $3,416 for government sponsored refugees during the period in question. For privately sponsored refugees, $l,347 of that was provided by the sponsor, a figure that is presumably an understatement given the frequent provision of goods and services in kind. Thus, while there may not be a great overall decrease in the cost of resettlement for privately sponsored refugees, there was certainly a lessened public cost—this without any great difference in outcomes for refugees. For the United States, my own computations of cost based on 1982 figures was $1,248 for cash assistance and food stamps during the first year of residence. This is best compared to the $2,100 per capita assistance and allowances cost for the Canadian situation over two years, which would convert to roughly US$800 for one year, thus leaving American per capita costs significantly higher. See Employment and Immigration Canada, Evaluation of the 1979–80 Indochinese Refugee Program (Ottawa: Carleton University, 1982), 25; and Office of Refugee Resettlement, Special Report to the Congress: The Feasibility and Advisability of Special Refugee Reception Centers (Washington, 1983), 102. For contrasting views on whether private sponsorship was effective—views that are in contrast largely about whether the reduction in costs itself is a sufficient criterion of success—see Doreen Indra, “An Analysis of the Canadian Private Sponsorship Program for Southeast Asian Refugees,” Ethnic Groups 7 (1988): 153–172; and C. Michael Lanphier, ‘Indochinese Resettlement: Cost of Adaptation in Canada, the United States and France,” in John R. Rogge, ed., Refugees: A Third World Dilemma (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1987), 200–308.
- While the data on employment in Canada must be tempered with an appreciation of the probable inflation in employment levels resulting from various factors in the design of the Canadian research (especially the use of mailed questionnaires), the extent of the differences is not explainable on those terms. Only the most optimistic U.S. data, based largely on reports from sponsors about the employment of anyone in a refugee family, yield employment levels equivalent to those reported for Canada—see Desma Holcomb and others. Making it on Their Own: From Refugee Sponsorship to Self-Sufficiency (New York: Church World Service, 1983). As well, analyses of subgroups of the Canadian refugee population, such as working wives, unmarried males, and the relatively uneducated, suggest that very high labor force participation is not just a skewing of results because of the survey's built-in self-selection of the relatively successful. Caution is thus needed about the extent of the difference, but not about its existence.