IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/31109.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Immigration and the Canadian Welfare State 2011

Author

Listed:
  • Grubel, Herbert
  • Grady, Patrick

Abstract

This publication provides an estimate of the fiscal burden created by recent immigration into Canada and proposes reforms to existing immigrant selection policies to eliminate the burden. It uses a 2006 Census database to estimate the average incomes and taxes paid on these by immigrants who arrived in Canada over the period from 1987 to 2004. It also estimates other taxes they paid and the value of government services they absorbed. The study concludes that in the fiscal year 2005/06 the immigrants on average received an excess of $6,051 in benefits over taxes paid. Depending on assumptions about the number of recent immigrants in Canada, the fiscal burden in that year is estimated to be between $23.6 billion and $16.3 billion. These estimates are not changed by the consideration of other alleged benefits brought by immigrants. To curtail this growing fiscal burden from immigration, the study proposes that temporary work visas be granted to applicants who have a valid offer for employment from employers, in occupations and at pay levels specified by the federal government and determined in cooperation with private-sector employers. Immediate dependents may accompany successful applicants. The temporary visas are renewable and lead to landed immigrant status if certain specified employment criteria are met.

Suggested Citation

  • Grubel, Herbert & Grady, Patrick, 2011. "Immigration and the Canadian Welfare State 2011," MPRA Paper 31109, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:31109
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/31109/1/MPRA_paper_31109.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Abbott, Michael & Beach, Charles M., 2009. "Immigrant Earnings Distributions and Earnings Mobility in Canada: Evidence for the 1982 Landing Cohort from IMDB Micro Data," CLSSRN working papers clsrn_admin-2009-22, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 13 Mar 2009.
    2. Morissette, Rene & Frenette, Marc, 2003. "Will They Ever Converge? Earnings of Immigrants and Canadian-born Workers over the Last Two Decades," Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series 2003215e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
    3. Picot, Garnett & Sweetman, Arthur, 2005. "The Deteriorating Economic Welfare of Immigrants and Possible Causes: Update 2005," Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series 2005262e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
    4. Picot, Garnett, 2008. "Immigrant Economic and Social Outcomes in Canada: Research and Data Development at Statistics Canada," Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series 2008319e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
    5. Pia M. Orrenius & Daniel Streitfeld, 2006. "TN Visas : a stepping stone toward a NAFTA labor market," Southwest Economy, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, issue Nov, pages 1-4.
    6. Grady, Patrick, 2010. "Some Observations on Net Fiscal Transfers to Recent Immigrants Resulting From Income Taxes and Government Transfer Programs," MPRA Paper 24402, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Grubel, Herbert & Grady, Patrick, 2012. "Fiscal transfers to immigrants in Canada: responding to critics and a revised estimate," MPRA Paper 37406, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 06 Mar 2012.
    2. Haozhen Zhang & Jianwei Zhong & Cédric de Chardon, 2020. "Immigrants’ net direct fiscal contribution: How does it change over their lifetime?," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(4), pages 1642-1662, November.
    3. Grady, Patrick, 2011. "A Critique of “Macroeconomic Impacts of Canadian Immigration… Using the Focus Model” (Dungan, Fang and Gunderson, 2010)," MPRA Paper 65454, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Kapsalis, Constantine, 2020. "The Fiscal Burden of Recent Immigrants to Canada," MPRA Paper 102505, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 18 Aug 2020.
    5. Grady, Patrick, 2012. "The parent and grandparent immigration program in Canada: costs and proposed changes," MPRA Paper 37289, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 08 Mar 2012.
    6. Patrick, Grady, 2015. "An Assessment of the Impact of Conservative Immigration Reform on the Labour Market Performance of Immigrants," MPRA Paper 65529, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Picot, Garnett & Sweetman, Arthur, 2011. "Canadian Immigration Policy and Immigrant Economic Outcomes: Why the Differences in Outcomes between Sweden and Canada?," IZA Policy Papers 25, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Grady, Patrick, 2010. "An Analysis of the Underlying Causes of the Poor Performance of Recent Immigrants Using the 2006 Census PUMF and Some Observations on Their Implications for Immigration Policy," MPRA Paper 24403, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Grady, Patrick, 2011. "How are the Children of Visible Minority Immigrants Doing in the Canadian Labour Market?," MPRA Paper 28503, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Gilles Grenier & Serge Nadeau, 2010. "Why is Immigrants’ Access to Employment lower in Montreal than in Toronto?," Working Papers 1005E, University of Ottawa, Department of Economics.
    5. Sandeep Kumar Agrawal, 2016. "Twice Migrants in Canada: Who Are They and How Do They Perform Economically?," Journal of International Migration and Integration, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 669-686, August.
    6. Hou, Feng, 2008. "Immigrants Working with Co-ethnics: Who Are They and How Do They Fare Economically?," Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series 2008310e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
    7. Arthur Sweetman & Casey Warman, 2012. "The Structure Of Canada`s Immigration System And Canadian Labour Market Outcomes," Working Paper 1292, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    8. Michael Haan, 2008. "The Place of Place: Location and Immigrant Economic Well-being in Canada," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 27(6), pages 751-771, December.
    9. McHale, John & Rogers, Keith, 2009. "Selecting Economic Immigrants: An Actuarial Approach," CLSSRN working papers clsrn_admin-2009-64, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 28 Nov 2009.
    10. Grady, Patrick, 2009. "The impact of immigration on Canada’s labour market," MPRA Paper 25148, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Grady, Patrick, 2011. "An analysis of the poor performance of recent immigrants and observations on immigration policy," MPRA Paper 31289, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Hou, Feng & Picot, Garnett, 2009. "The Effect of Immigrant Selection and the IT Bust on the Entry Earnings of Immigrants," CLSSRN working papers clsrn_admin-2009-37, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 26 Jun 2009.
    13. Hou, Feng & Picot, Garnett, 2009. "Seeking Success in Canada and the United States: the Determinants of Labour Market Outcomes Among the Children of Immigrants," CLSSRN working papers clsrn_admin-2009-63, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 28 Nov 2009.
    14. Hou, Feng & Picot, Garnett, 2010. "Preparing for Success in Canada and the United States: the Determinants of Educational Attainment Among the Children of Immigrants," CLSSRN working papers clsrn_admin-2010-13, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 30 Apr 2010.
    15. Casey Warman, 2007. "You Can Take It With You! The Returns To Foreign Human Capital Of Male Temporary Foreign Workers," Working Paper 1125, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    16. Maude BOULET & Brahim BOUDARBAT, 2015. "The Economic Performance of Immigrants with Canadian Education," Regional and Sectoral Economic Studies, Euro-American Association of Economic Development, vol. 15(2), pages 23-40.
    17. Kristyn Frank & Kelli Phythian & David Walters & Paul Anisef, 2013. "Understanding the Economic Integration of Immigrants: A Wage Decomposition of the Earnings Disparities between Native-Born Canadians and Recent Immigrant Cohorts," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 2(2), pages 1-22, April.
    18. Patrick, Grady, 2016. "How are the Children of Visible Minority Immigrants Doing? An Update Based on the National Household Survey," MPRA Paper 71707, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Hou, Feng & Picot, Garnett & Coulombe, Simon, 2007. "Chronic Low Income and Low-income Dynamics Among Recent Immigrants," Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series 2007294e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
    20. Melina Young, 2007. "Labour Market Integration of High-skilled Immigrants: Maximizing Knowledge Spillover in Toronto," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 22(4), pages 401-408, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Canadian immigration; fiscal impacts of immigration to Canada; Immigration policy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H22 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Incidence
    • H40 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - General
    • J65 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment Insurance; Severance Pay; Plant Closings
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:31109. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.