Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
investor stream parents were older and a number move directly into
retirement in Vancouver, enjoying a rewarding quality of life. Indeed on
their landing form a surprisingly large minority of BIP arrivals indicated
they would not be working in Canada, although they entered within the
general class of economic migrants. In addition an older immigration cate-
gory, the retired class, survived into the 1990s and this category alone
allowed admission for over 11,000 immigrants from Hong Kong to
Vancouver and over 3,000 from Taiwan from 1980 onwards.
Short-term hunkering down
This is a stressful social condition with families putting in time awaiting
passage of the three years of residence that would qualify them for citizen-
ship and 'passport insurance'. Typically economic activity in Canada is lim-
ited: either entrepreneurs are running a business with stingy profits (or
unacceptable losses) or, with their business approved by immigration staff,
they are waiting out their time; investors are engaging in passive plays in the
financial or property markets. These limited earnings plus savings and in
many cases offshore income sustain the family. Especially for men used to
active business lives this enforced sense of detention is grinding and aggra-
vates interpersonal tensions around the house. The apt metaphor of 'immi-
gration jail' is widely recognized in the immigrant community to describe
this involuntary state of limbo (cf. Findlay and Li 1997; Teo 2007).
The astronaut household
In the astronaut household frequently the principal wage earner, almost
always a male, works in East Asia, often in a business owned prior to migra-
tion, and commutes several times a year to join his nuclear family in Canada
for a few weeks at a time. Some families reach this strategy as a fall-back
option with the failure of their economic aspirations in Canada, but
some plan it consciously even before leaving Asia; Waters (2002) spoke
to some families in Vancouver where the principal wage earner left Canada
as little as a week after landing. But almost all become a fragmented family
reluctantly and with a view to termination as soon as possible. The pri-
macy of the international airport in the life of recent immigrants is sug-
gested by the concentration of 1986-96 arrivals of ethnic Chinese in a
semi-circle of census tracts around this activity node (Figure 5.6). The
actual number of astronauts engaging in the 'Pacific shuttle' at any one
time is uncertain, but it is large. In a lawsuit filed by four dozen astronauts
in Greater Vancouver against the federal government in 2003, it was
