Thursday, September 29, 2005

Small centres will benefit from immigrant influx

Another interesting article at TheStar.com:

Existing studies show immigrants who settle in smaller places experience labour market advantages over those in the larger gateway cities.

In British Columbia, for example, recent immigrant men who settled outside the large cities earned several thousand dollars more annually than their urban counterparts in
Vancouver or Victoria. In addition, the labour force participation rates of newcomers in non-metropolitan areas are similar to those of locals and higher than those of immigrants in Vancouver or Victoria.

A final interesting component of Volpe's proposal is that he wants to "put in place a process that allows for the integration process to begin at the moment an application is deemed to be ready."

This component of Volpe's plan should include foreign credential recognition, job search and settlement assistance. When immigrants can apply their skills and receive decent wages on the day they arrive in Canada, they will not have to rely on the low-wage labour market of large cities as a survival strategy.

Instead, they will have greater flexibility of settling in a wider range of communities.


- the writer concludes: "Let's make sure that plan stays on track."

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