Immigrants to Nova Scotia are leading their counterparts across the country when it comes to creating jobs and making money.
The most recent Pathways to Prosperity report shows that immigrants are doing well economically in Nova Scotia.
“This report shows it’s time to start busting myths,” says Howard Ramos, a professor of political sociology at Dalhousie University. “You can do well outside of Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. In Nova Scotia you can do well too.”
Ramos worked on the report, called Who are recent immigrants and what are their economic activities: An analysis of sociodemographic profiles and economic activities across immigration categories, with will fellow Dal researcher Yoko Yoshida, Madine VanderPlaat (Saint Mary’s University), and Gerry Mills and Nabiha Atallah (Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia).
Using data from 1990 through 2012, the researchers found that immigrants to Nova Scotia, from both the economic and sponsored-family classes, perform better economically than their counterparts across the country.
The study also shows that immigrants to Nova Scotia have slightly higher rates of employment than their counterparts in the rest of the country one year after landing in Nova Scotia.
Over time, immigrants’ earnings are higher in Nova Scotia than in the rest of Canada, with few exceptions. The report also found average earnings increased for immigrants to Nova Scotia over time.
While immigration policy often prizes economic principal applicants over family sponsored immigrants, the report found the later often economically outperformed the former, with the exception of the 2010-2012 cohort. The study also found that “family sponsored immigrants fare well and at times better than economic immigrants in a region that has low immigration, economic struggles and high outmigration.”
Yoshida and Ramos have long been interested in studying how immigrants fare in Nova Scotia. This report, along with others to be released next year, focuses on producing data that organizations like ISANS can use to improve the services they deliver.
“We’ve done a number of research initiatives with Howard to see what the impact is on service delivery,” says Mills, executive director of ISANS. “He has been great at coming to us in the beginning and asking what would be helpful and what could we use.”
Mills says it’s time more people look at the numbers. She points to the myth that many doctors and engineers from other countries are driving taxis in Nova Scotia.
“Somebody is twice as likely to be working in their field in Nova Scotia than in other provinces,” Mills says. “That’s not something that’s widely known. It still is only 40 per cent, but on the other hand, only 60 per cent of the Canadian-born population is working in the field they trained in.”
Ramos says the report highlights positive results of increases to the number of immigrants coming in through the Provincial Nominee Program.
“I think it shows the work of ISANS, the YMCA and other service providers is top-notch and doing a great job of integrating people and connecting them with the business community.”
Immigration is a net gain for the province.
“We’re at a point with population demography in Nova Scotia that there are differences between the city, Halifax, and other hubs throughout the region, verses rural areas,” Ramos says. “But there are jobs and we need people to work them or our economy is going to shrink.”
Since the report launched last December, Ramos and Yoshida have been working on the next set of data. In 2017, they will release updated figures and break down the data to look at how immigrants perform in different regions of the province.
“This is something we’re committed to looking at in a long term way,” Ramos says. “It’s not a one-time analysis.”
A study of this nature isn’t a simple task, Ramos says. The researchers used immigrants’ landing and income tax files to track their progress, which means acquiring the data takes a lot of time. “When you’re dealing with the administrative data, there are a lot of checks and balances to preserve privacy,” he says.
Ramos and Mills are hopeful this report, and those to come, will change the narrative about immigrants in Nova Scotia.
“We’ve shown the proof of concept that things have changed for immigrants to the region,” Ramos says. “The next thing policy makers need to do is make a commitment to ensure people stay, which I think is also changing, but we don’t have those numbers yet.”
