Immigrants battle chronic low income By MARINA JIMÉNEZ
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
A landmark national study confirms what new immigrants already know: They are financially no better off now than they were at the turn of the millennium, and have poverty rates three times higher than Canadians, despite their high levels of education. The Statistics Canada study is an indictment of Canada's immigrant selection model, which actively recruits skilled professionals, most of whom cannot get work in their fields, and are forced to accept jobs delivering pizza or pumping gas.
In 2002, low-income rates among immigrant families during their first full year in Canada were 3.5 times higher than those of people born in Canada -- higher than at any time in the 1990s. By 2004, they were 3.2 times higher. This is the first-ever study examining the chronic low income of immigrants, and the researchers tracked as many as 280,000 people over 15 years.
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