Smarter than your average Canadian

And yet more likely to be unemployed. Authors of an Institute for Research on Public Policy study contributed a column to today's Globe and Mail:

"Immigration and integration - More must be done to improve the economic prospects of highly educated immigrants"

"Much of the rhetoric in today's debate on reasonable accommodation of minorities misses a critical and obvious point: that integration into a new society begins with a job. Work is a source of both cultural socialization and acclimation.

For this reason, a recently released Statistics Canada report on immigrant labour-market integration is troubling. It revealed, among other things, that unemployment among newcomers is double the Canadian average.

While the fact that recent arrivals make less money and experience higher unemployment is hardly news, the profile of the current cohort of immigrants makes this very troubling. Since the 1990s, Ottawa and Quebec (which establishes its own selection requirements) have emphasized education and experience as criteria for immigrants. As a result, recent groups of newcomers are better educated and more skilled than previous generations. Their educational credentials now surpass those of the average Canadian-born citizen..."

Brahim Boudarbat and Maude Boulet are, respectively, a professor and a PhD student at Université de Montréal. Their study, "Détérioration des salaires des nouveaux immigrants au Québec par rapport à l'Ontario et à la Colombie-Britannique," published by the Institute for Research on Public Policy, is available at www.irpp.org.