The Decibel - What new census data tells us about immigrants in Canada

Episode Date: October 28, 2022

New census data from Statistics Canada shows that immigrants now represent 23 per cent of the Canadian population, a new high. But these numbers only tell half the story. The challenges that immigrants face in getting into the country are numerous and complex.Dakshana Bascaramurty digs into the new numbers and explains why some people will risk their lives to move to North America.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Hi, I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and you're listening to The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. There are more immigrants in Canada than ever before. New census numbers from this week show that immigrants make up nearly a quarter of the country's population. But the process of getting here and settling in isn't always easy. There are settlement agencies across the country who get funding from the federal government, from the provincial government and other sources.

But we haven't seen the support for them keep pace with the dramatic increase in how many immigrants are arriving here. Dakshana Bhaskaramurthy is The Globe's race and ethnicity reporter. And as someone who's been covering immigration for over a decade, she'll tell us about the people behind the census numbers and about one Indian family who died in Canada trying to cross to the United States. This is The Decibel.

Dakshana, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks so much for having me. So this week's census information showed that Canada's immigrant population grew to 23%. What else did we actually learn, though, from the latest census data about who is immigrating to Canada and how? So the trend for so much of Canada's history had been that the bulk of immigrants were coming from Europe. But basically, since the 1980s, we have seen a dramatic shift. And now the majority of immigrants are coming from Asian countries. And the top three source countries for immigrants are India, the Philippines, and China. Another interesting thing that we learned from the census release is that almost one third of

all children in Canada have one parent born abroad. You know, I'm not just talking about the immigrant population. This is all Canadians. And so that makes up, you know, 1.9 million children younger than 15. So, you know, these are called second generation kids, and I think it's really going to shape what the future of Canada looks like. Okay, okay. And you mentioned that India is the top country for people coming to Canada. And I know you've done a lot of reporting on this process, Dakshana, and the industry in particular that's been created in India to make this happen. How would you describe what you learned about the pull, I guess, that people from India feel that motivates them to come to Canada?

Canada is seen as this land of opportunity. A lot of families will start saving when their children are very young to, you know, sponsor this move across the ocean to Canada. And there is a growing middle class in India that's now making it more possible to make this move. But there's still a lot of people who are going into debt, who are, you know, mortgaging their homes or the farmland that they own to make this possible because they think that it's going to pay off in the long term. You know, they get their one child started off in Canada, you know, maybe enrolled in a university or a college there. And then eventually they'll get the job that earns them enough money to bring other members of the family over. So I've reported a lot on the way that international education is being used as a means of getting to Canada and then, you know, working and applying for permanent residency.

But we saw in the census data that there are also a huge number of Indian immigrants who are coming here as skilled workers who are coming here as skilled workers, who are coming here through the provincial nominee program. And, you know, they now make up 18.6% of immigrants to Canada. And I know you've done a lot of reporting specifically about one family who came here from India. This is a bit of a sad story, but can you just tell me a little bit about the Patel family and what happened to them? Sure. I spent a good chunk of this year working with a reporter, freelancer, Akanksha Singh in India, telling the story of this family. So as you mentioned, this is a pretty tragic tale. There's a family of four in the town of Dinguja in the western state of Gujarat in India. You know, it was the father,

Jagdish Patel, the mother, Vaishali Patel, and they had two kids, Vihangi, who was 11, and Dharmik, who was three. And there is a huge Gujarati population in the US. And the idea is you go to where you already have an established community. So as far as we understand, they wanted to make this move to the US, but it's difficult, much more difficult to immigrate to the US.S. than it is to immigrate to Canada. So what we understand happened is they flew to Canada and then tried to make were just short of crossing the border from Canada into the U.S. They were found in Manitoba. in India of this huge machine, this smuggling network that spans India, Canada, and the U.S. of getting people who are undocumented into the U.S. through Canada. And I remember when the story broke in early January, this seemed like such a surprising route for people to take. But I learned through my reporting that it's not that unusual.

You know, on average, from 2010 to 2020, 168 people each year from India are apprehended by U.S. border officials trying to cross from Canada to the U.S. at these sort of illegal border crossings. So this is not necessarily a unique trek to take then. Like, what would be the landscape that they're trying to cross at that border? So this was rural Manitoba in January in the middle of a blizzard. And, you know, this was a family that had always lived in India. You know, Akanksha traveled to this village and she spoke to some of their neighbors. And she heard that Vaishali, the mother, was the kind of parent who would call her kids in if there was just a little chill in the air because she thought that, you know, they weren't safe out there, that they might get sick. And, you know, this was a major blizzard in Manitoba. They weren't

dressed appropriately for it. And they were, you know, on foot for hours trying to get across the border. So these were extreme conditions, even for people, you know, who were Canadian born, who had grown up in that environment. I don't think they would ever attempt such a trek. And with two little kids, too. undocumented Indian nationals who were also found around the border. There was an American, Steve Shand, who was driving a van and there were two undocumented Indian nationals who were with him. And it's presumed that he was driving with those two. He was going to pick up the five and also possibly the Patel family who got separated from the group. Wow. I mean, this is just a devastatingly sad story, Dakshana, to hear the details of this.

You talked about this guy, though, Steve Shand, who sounds like he was part of this smuggling operation to get people across the border. What do we know about that side of things? And what's going to happen to this individual who was caught, Steve Shand? So he was arrested and he faces a few charges related to smuggling. But he's considered to be a pretty low level player. You know, he was just the guy driving the van. And he is likely part of a much larger network, again, he's the only person that's been arrested and charged. And I've learned from my reporting that it's very difficult to investigate and lay charges in operations like this because these networks are made up of a lot of people across three different countries. And a lot of times they are connected,

you know, sometimes they're extended family members of the people who are being smuggled across the border, sometimes their neighbors. And so, you know, if you are trying to get your family member from this village in India to the U.S. and something happens, you know, your family member is apprehended at the border or in this, you know, very extreme example, they die attempting to cross it. Maybe those people that you have helped put them in touch with, you know, their smugglers are people that are known to you. We'll be right back. The Patel story makes me wonder, Daksana, we've talked a little bit about this, but I guess I really kind of want to get to the heart of it here. How difficult or easy is it to legally immigrate to Canada today? It's a lot easier than it used to be. And the federal government,

so the liberal government of Justin Trudeau, since they came into power in 2015, they have reduced a lot of the obstacles that immigrants used to face to get them here. And that has been a priority because we are facing a huge labor shortage right across the country. And also, we've had a declining birth rate in Canada since 2009. And one big change has actually been giving the provinces more power to recruit immigrants directly. And that's been happening since the late 90s through what's called the Provincial Nominee Program. So each province can, you know, look at what their local labor needs are and work with employers to make it easier to bring immigrants here to

set them up with work. And they have this sort of point system where if you are applying to immigrate to Canada through one of these provinces, you know, you get assigned a certain number of points. If you meet a sort of minimum threshold, you know, you get in. And I spoke to this one recent immigrant to Saskatchewan, Akash Patel. And we should say no relation to the Patel family we were talking about earlier. No, no relation to the Patel family, no. And he's 30 years old, which means that he is in this age category that is like the most coveted. You know, he's young. He's a recent-ish graduate. He's got a master's degree and he's ready to work. And he came to Saskatchewan,

to Swift Current, Saskatchewan, which is not a very large town, you know, a town of, you know, slightly more than 60,000 people. And he has been there since March. And, you know, it's probably not a place he would have considered, but he had a sister who was living there, a brother-in-law. And, you know, they moved there a couple of years earlier. They had a two-bedroom apartment that he could move into. And so this is a place that, you know, he hopes to stay in long term. You know, I think we have this this old idea of immigrants always wanting to go to the same places. But we've also seen a pretty big shift in where immigrants are landing. You know, again, traditionally, it had been destination

Toronto, destination Montreal, destination Vancouver, and sort of the surrounding areas. But those cities have gotten really expensive. And we have seen a huge increase in the number of immigrants that were moving to the Kitchener-Waterloo region in Ontario. You know, a big increase for ones that are settling in Ottawa, Gatineau. And probably the most dramatic change we've seen is in Atlantic Canada. Since 2006, the number of immigrants who have settled there has tripled. What support does the government give to people when they're approved to immigrate here? So there are settlement agencies across the

country who get funding from the federal government, from the provincial government and other sources. But we haven't seen the support for them keep pace with the dramatic increase in how many immigrants are arriving here. So when the Trudeau government was elected, you know, they sort of set this benchmark of at least 300,000 immigrants would be admitted to Canada every year. And we have seen them way surpass that. I mean, by 2023, their target will be for almost 450,000 immigrants. But, you know, I spoke to someone at ISANS, which is the Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia. And she was telling me about how, you know, they struggle with worker retention in the settlement sector. They struggle with, you know, reliable funding.

You know, with ISANS, for example, you know, the province of Nova Scotia, from 2018 to 2021, the number of permanent residents coming to Nova Scotia increased by 51%. But ISANS' budget only increased by 7%. So you're just forced to do more with less. I mean, yeah, that sounds like that could present an issue of people not getting the support essentially that they might have before. Just before I let you go here, Dakshana, you've done a lot of reporting on this issue. I guess, is there something that you've learned about the immigration process through your work that maybe most Canadians don't know? I think one of the sort of most surprising and actually entertaining things I've learned is just how well YouTube has been used to educate people before they begin their immigration journey. YouTube. Yes, on all these different parts of Canada

that, you know, I guess wouldn't have been on the radar of immigrants otherwise. If you go to YouTube right now, you can enter in the name of almost any city in Canada and then immigration afterwards. So try this. Try this with Brandon and immigration. Try, you know, Brandon, Manitoba and immigration. You can try this with St. John,

New Brunswick and immigration. You can try this with Lethbridge, Alberta and immigration. And you will find a YouTube video that was uploaded by a recent immigrant explaining, you know, what the town looks like or what the city looks like. They'll explain the steps that you need to go through to apply through the provincial nominee program. You know, these recent immigrants are doing a lot of the heavy lifting of recruitment through these videos. And they're trying to help, you know, others who have made, who are about to make that same journey that they did, you know, navigate the travel a little bit easier, navigate the application process easier. And then also, you know, sell to them this place that is maybe not on their radar yet, but has proven to be a good new home.

That's fascinating. I had no idea. Dakshana, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. Thanks so much for having me. That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland,

and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Kasia Mihailovic is our senior producer and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening and I'll talk to you next week.