Immigration and Employment in Ontario - Term Paper Example

Immigration in Canada has a long history. In fact, it has been found (Coyne, 1996) that in the 128 years since Confederation, some 14 million immigrants came to Canada, almost a third before the First World War as Canadian immigration policy was essentially an open door. In this context, between 1867 and 1899, Canada absorbed 1.6 million immigrants into a population at Confederation of barely three million. Furthermore, it is noticed that even under the selective policy introduced in the 1900s, immigration remained high: in the first 15 years of this century, a further 2.

9 million came, most to settle the Prairies; the annual rate of intake in those years — three percent of the population — was four times today's rate. The First World War ended this period of relatively free entry, and the Depression shut the doors almost entirely. Though the doors swung open in the 1950s and 1960s, at times exceeding 200,000 immigrants a year, they swung back to near Depression levels in proportion to population, bottoming out in 1985 at 84,000. Since then, the rate has increased, to a peak of more than 250,000 in 1993.

In this context, it has been noticed by Gertler (2001) that one of the most important flows to reshape the character and geography of Canadian cities have been international immigration, a phenomenon that has been responsible for bringing incredible dynamism and vitality to (especially) the large metropolitan areas, while also posing some serious challenges for Canadian society and public policy. However, although the impact of immigration is both broad and deep, it has become an overwhelmingly big-city phenomenon in recent years.

On the other hand, the presence of immigrants in Toronto seems to be significant. As it has been found, while immigrants constituted some 17.4 percent of Canada’s population at the last Census (in 1996), the figure for the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area was a startling 42 percent.