Immigration of Catholic Priests in Canada

April 6, 2021

Question:

I am looking for the statistics and numbers on the immigration of religious workers in Canada since the 1990s, and more specifically Catholic priests. I would like to find the following information:

·         Number of priests that immigrated to Canada as "religious workers" each year since 1990

·         Where these priests were from

·         Which province these priests migrated to or at least which parish sent a letter to hire them

If the type of religious worker (ex: priest/rabbi/Iman) is not tracked, and only the number of religious workers as a whole is tracked, I would still like the stats on the number of religious workers that immigrated to Canada from 1990 and what province they went to.

 I was wondering if you could point me in the right direction for this data?

Answer:

I found from IRCC a bit of the legal aspect about this -

Religious work – International Mobility Program https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/publications-manuals/operational-bulletins-manuals/temporary-residents/foreign-workers/work-without-permit/authorization-work-without-work-permit-clergy.html

 

There are two separate provisions in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations (IRPR) relating to religious work:

 

• paragraph R186(l) provides a work permit exemption for religious leaders
• paragraph R205(d) provides a labour market impact assessment (LMIA) exemption (code C50)

 

So I looked on the Open Data Portal for data on the International Mobility Program and found the following

 

Temporary Residents: Work Permit Holders – Ad Hoc IRCC (Specialized Datasets)

Temporary residents who are in Canada on a work permit in the observed calendar year. Datasets include Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) and International Mobility Program (IMP) work permit holders by year in which permit(s) became effective. Please note that the datasets will not be updated.

https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/67fd1fae-4950-4018-a491-62e60cbd6974

 

Specialized Research Datasets: Temporary Resident – Ad Hoc IRCC (Specialized Datasets)

https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/31ef4cab-d2b3-4dba-8e91-48fe64211ec5

 

But I can’t validate that the data contains the specific work permit of interest because when I click on the Access button, nothing happens on either dataset. Perhaps IRCC would have the data and could make it available upon request?

Immigration data for Mirabel airport

Question

I have a researcher who is looking for immigration data at the port of entry level, specifically for the Mirabel Airport in Montreal, from 1975 to 2004.

She would like to obtain the following info:

· Total number of landed immigrants who went through the airport. These numbers are available for the 1966 to 1996 period from the Immigration Statistics Archive (http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/202/301/immigration_statistics-ef/index.html) but we are missing the 1997 to 2004 period. Is that available anywhere? And it would be nice to obtain a table summarizing this information for the whole period(1975 to 2004) as the Immigration Statistics Archive is composed of individual pdf documents for each year.

· Country of origin of immigrants going through Mirabel, per year (1975 to 2004)

· Type of immigrant category (family, economic, refugee, other), also per year (1975 to 2004)

Finally, she would also like to know the percentage of successful immigration requests for immigrants landed through that same airport. I’m not sure if that question makes sense as my impression is that one has to apply for immigration from outside of Canada and cannot apply upon arrival at the airport, but I would like to confirm that.

Answer

This data should be available from CIC’s Immigrant Landing File. It contains a variable for point of entry, for country of origin and immigration category.

SASD does have access to a data source called the Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB), which is a record linkage between the Immigrant Landing File and T1FF tax data. However, it has a linkage rate of approximately 87% and its intended use is for analysing the economic performance of immigrants, via the tax data. If none of the tax file data is of interest, the IMDB should not be used. Furthermore, this data source only includes immigrants who obtained their landed immigrant status since 1980 and who have filed at least one tax return since 1982. Due to these limitations, our data source would not be appropriate.

A landed immigrant could have been living in Canada for multiple years before obtaining their landed immigrant status. So it may be possible to obtain data relating to successful applications for immigrants who entered Canada via Mirabel Airport. Unfortunately, I cannot say this with certainty and you will have to contact CIC for a more thorough answer.

Finally, to contact CIC about a potential data request, you can try this email:NHQ-RE-STATS@cic.gc.ca

Historic immigration data

Question

I have a researcher looking to obtain immigration data including immigrant status, place of birth, and period of immigration (by decade). Basically, they need the equivalent of this table, but they would like this information back to the 1940s, whereas this table groups everything "before 1971" together.

Going back through basic summary tabulations from much older census years, I did find similar tables that went back further in time, but place of birth is by very broad geographies (13 categories).

Is this data available through any table that I am missing, or through custom tabulation?

Answer

The following tables go back to 1961.

http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/tbt/Rp-eng.cfm?LANG=E&APATH=3&DETAIL=0&DIM=0&FL=A&FREE=0&GC=0&GID=0&GK=0&GRP=1&PID=89425&PRID=0&PTYPE=88971,97154&S=0&SHOWALL=0&SUB=0&Temporal=2006&THEME=72&VID=0&VNAMEE=&VNAMEF=

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/c1996-r1996/nov4-4nov/imm1-eng.htm

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/c1996-r1996/nov4-4nov/imm2a-eng.htm

We only have documentation back to 1971 here at the Help Desk and the ability to produce custom tabulations is only as far back as 1971.

That being said, I found a few resources that may be of use to them.

A few of this CANSIM tables could be of interest to them:

http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/subject-sujet/result-resultat?pid=30000&id=30004&lang=eng&type=ARRAY&pageNum=1&more=0

The following historical Census table (does not however, include Place of Birth)

http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/tbt/Rp-eng.cfm?LANG=E&APATH=3&DETAIL=0&DIM=0&FL=A&FREE=0&GC=0&GID=0&GK=0&GRP=1&PID=89423&PRID=0&PTYPE=88971,97154&S=0&SHOWALL=0&SUB=0&Temporal=2006&THEME=72&VID=0&VNAMEE=&VNAMEF=

Also the following publication:

Canadian Social Trends – 100 years of immigration in Canada

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008-x/2000002/article/5164-eng.pdf

They can also check out the Canada yearbooks for the historical years here and look under the Immigration and Colonization section.

As an example, this is 1941.

http://www66.statcan.gc.ca/eng/acyb_c1941-eng.aspx?opt=/eng/1941/194101730115_p. 115.pdf

The rest are here:

http://www66.statcan.gc.ca/acyb_000-eng.htm

Or the following years are available for quick access (there are a list of tables available in each year).

http://www65.statcan.gc.ca/acyb02/acyb02_0000-eng.htm

Immigration Canada Facts and Figures

Question

I have a researcher asking for historical immigration data. Is the historical data available for inclusion in the DLI Collection?

Immigration Canada Facts and Figures publication.

I am looking for historical time series for:

• Canada – Transition of temporary residents to permanent resident status


• Canada – Transition of temporary residents by previous yearly status


• Canada – Total entries of foreign students by province or territory and urban are


• Canada – Foreign students present on December 1st by province or territory and urban area

Preferably starting from 1980.

The historical series are not available on the Citizenship and Immigration website or from Stats Can...

Answer

We have a copy of the Citizenship and Immigration Canada 2006 Facts and Figures Digital Library on the DLI mirror site at the University of Alberta (please see: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/dli-ild/data-donnees/ftp/cic-cic-eng.htm). I had a quick look at this product and while some of the tables go back to 1980, others only back into the '90s. The researcher may wish to approach CIC (Research-Recherche@cic.gc.ca) directly to see if they can provide additional historical data if the Digital Library product doesn't contain all of the data he/she needs. They can also provide the 2008 edition of the Facts and Figures Digital Library on request.

Facts and Figures 2008 Digital Library
The Facts and Figures 2008 Digital Library is a bilingual collection of statistical tables describing Canada’s permanent and temporary residents. The tables are available in Excel and are easily accessible through a built-in search engine.

The collection includes annual statistics for both permanent and temporary residents for calendar years 1984 to 2008 along with a series of tables describing additional selected characteristics for the ten-year period from 1999 to 2008. Tables are provided for Canada, the provinces and territories, and selected urban areas. The temporary resident section includes information for foreign workers, foreign students, refugee claimants and other humanitarian cases.

Annual statistics are provided for new permanent residents, total entries of temporary residents and temporary residents present on December 1st as well as for transitions from one temporary resident status to another and from temporary resident to permanent resident status. Please contact Research-Recherche@cic.gc.ca to request copies of the Facts and Figures 2008 Digital Library." (http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/statistics/menu-fact.asp)

StatCan has a Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB, http://www.statcan.gc.ca/cgi-bin/imdb/p2SV.pl?Function=getSurvey&SDDS=5057&lang=en&db=imdb&adm=8&dis=2) that covers 1980 to 2007. This database isn't available through the DLI but custom data extractions from this database are available for a fee. If this would be of interest to your researcher, I can consult the division that oversees the Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB) to confirm if the tables your researcher requires could be produced on a custom basis.

The researcher may also wish to look into the files held by the Metropolis project in BC (http://mbc.metropolis.net/). Their data holdings are described at: http://web.uvic.ca/~baer/MBC/

The following Postsecondary Student Information System (PSIS) table only goes back to 1992/1993 but may still be of interest to the researcher: University enrolments, by province of study and immigration status, annual (number), 1992/1993 to 2007/2008 (xls) at http://www.statcan.gc.ca/dli-ild/data-donnees/ftp/psis-siep-eng.htm

I hope that this is helpful.