Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
(notably Toronto) was also a major beneficiary from secondary migration,
adding 28 percent to its tax-filer list among business immigrants, while
Quebec (and Montreal) was a major loser, with net out-migration of 44
percent of its business class tax-filers during the 1980-95 period.
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With business immigrants, as we have seen, heavily concentrated in the
major metropolitan areas, this secondary re-distribution after landing would
significantly add to the Vancouver and Toronto numbers while substantially
reducing the Montreal total. Consequently some 35 percent of business
immigrants landing in Canada have located in Vancouver allowing for the
gains from secondary migration. We will see shortly that business arrivals in
Vancouver were also the wealthiest. Evidently their arrival might be expected
to introduce significant economic impacts of all kinds: in the property
market, in consumer expenditures, and as agents of economic development,
the role laid out for them by the Canadian state.
LIDS enables us to disentangle a more detailed profile of each immigrant
class, but our focus is now the business streams, the primary site of million-
aire migrants. Business immigrants are typically older, with 25-30 percent
aged 40-54 at landing, twice the share of all immigrants, but understanda-
ble in light of the requirement that they hold business experience and have
accumulated significant mobile capital. Indicative of their status as nuclear
families, 42 percent are less than 20 years old, compared to a figure under
30 percent for all immigrants. Families are at a mature stage in the life cycle,
presenting different priorities than those of younger skilled immigrants.
Business immigrants also have lower education levels than most newcom-
ers, with under 18 percent of those over 19 years of age claiming a univer-
sity degree, compared with 20 percent of all immigrants and 35 percent of
the independent (skilled) category. Language points up a similar limitation.
On their landing cards, a majority of business immigrants (57 percent)
declared that they could speak neither English nor French, compared to 44
percent of all immigrants and 26 percent of skilled workers. Most of these
wealthy migrants would not have qualified for immigration as skilled work-
ers (the independent class) with such depleted human capital.
But what was lacking in human capital they more than made up in finan-
cial capital and business experience. Wong and Ho (2006) have undertaken
a customized analysis of unpublished financial information for the period
1986-2002, covering 3.65 million records in the LIDS data base. They
determined that the average funds per capita immigrants held in their pos-
session upon landing was $7,234. Their analysis highlights the Chinese
diaspora from East and Southeast Asia, who contributed a fifth of the
records. For all ethnic Chinese immigrants the mean money per capita in
possession at landing was $20,205, much higher than other immigrant
entries. But that figure varied substantially among entry classes. For
the small refugee group of Chinese ethnic origin the total was only $438,
