Number of immigrants welcomed in Quebec | Official numbers don’t tell the whole story

While we are tearing ourselves apart over whether we should welcome more or less than 50,000 immigrants a year, a threshold that the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) does not want to exceed, Quebec actually welcomes almost twice as many.

A total of 90,900 people from other countries settled in Quebec from 1^er July 2021 to June 30, 2022.

The difference is temporary immigrants, people who came to Quebec for various reasons – agricultural workers, international students, skilled workers, asylum seekers. For all of Canada, there are more than 850,000.

There is thus a significant discrepancy between the figures on immigration, used in the public debate, and the actual number of people who settle here.

The debate is about the number of people who obtain permanent immigration status each year.

It is this figure that is the subject of disagreements between the target of Quebec, 50,000, and that of Ottawa, 500,000, by 2025. Or, during the election campaign, between the threshold of 50,000 defended by the caquistes, that of 70,000 liberals or 80,000 solidarity. And yet, these data, which have taken on symbolic value, do not adequately describe the reality of immigration.

“We are not taking the right figures,” says economist Pierre Fortin.

“The official figures used by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and the Ministère de l’Immigration, de la Francisation et de l’Intégration du Québec are the figures for permanent immigration. To these figures must be added the annual increase in temporary immigration,” he explains.

The Institut du Québec says the same thing. In a report released in June, the authors note: “Although the Government of Quebec has in recent years lowered its reception thresholds for permanent immigrants, the province has, in fact, welcomed many more newcomers to its territory. »

Data on immigration thresholds are obviously not wrong. These are official statistics. But they do not fully take into account the magnitude of the arrival in our territory of an additional number of tens of thousands of people from outside, and therefore the challenges related to integration and taking in charge, or the effects on linguistic balances.

It is as if, in wanting to measure the number of calories that we have absorbed in a day, we only take into account the caloric intake of solid foods, but we forget to take into account the calories coming from liquids.

“It is the increase from one year to another in the number of people who enter and live on the territory of the nation”, adds the economist.

Difficult to estimate

The image that we often associate with an immigrant is that of a person who applied from his country, who obtained a favorable response from the Canadian authorities and who, one day, arrives here. Once by boat, now by plane.

But in fact, a very high proportion of people who obtain immigration status were already here, sometimes for years, under various programs, and finally obtained permanent residence.

They therefore do not arrive in Canada or Quebec, they change status and column in the statistics.

“There are still some who are chosen from outside, but what I understand is that people may have a better profile if they are already here. I think it’s interesting to take people who are already here because they are integrated, ”explains Stéphanie Valois, president of the Quebec Association of Immigration Lawyers.

The number of permanent immigrants is fairly stable, according to the most recent data from Statistics Canada: from 50,000 to 56,000 in the 2010s, 44,866 in 2018-2019, with the arrival of the CAQ in power and its commitment to reduce the threshold to 40,000, a drop to 33,295 and to 33,673 during the two years marked by the pandemic, a rise to 62,798 in 2021-2022, due to post-COVID-19 catch-up.

Meanwhile, another process is at play, that of temporary immigrants entering and leaving Quebec. Their number is more difficult to assess because of the non-permanent nature of their presence. However, official statistics measure the balance of these arrivals and departures. In just a few years, the balance of temporary immigrants has exploded, from 12,671 in 2016 to 63,076 in 2019.

The fact that the number of people who enter Québec in this way is greater than the number who leave means that the pool of non-permanent residents increases from year to year.

Former Minister of Immigration, Francisation and Integration (MIFI) Jean Boulet said in June that there were 177,000 temporary immigrants in Quebec in 2021.

This figure breaks down as follows: 23,795 Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) work permit holders, 62,270 International Mobility Program work permit holders, and 90,800 international students.

However, this figure does not take into account persons residing temporarily in Quebec who do not hold a permit, “such as children of permit holders, spouses who have not applied for a permit, asylum seekers who do not have a permit, people whose initial permit has expired and who are waiting for a renewal with permission to work or not,” said MIFI spokesperson Gabriel Bélanger.

The previous peak was reached in 2019, before the pandemic, with 167,435 people. It was 102,125 in 2016.

If the number of temporary immigrants is increasing, it is because the governments, both in Quebec and in Ottawa, want them to be there.

In its 2022 Immigration Plan, the MIFI aims in particular to “support employers in all regions of Quebec in their efforts to recruit temporary foreign workers, in order to increase the number, reduce the delays before their arrival and facilitate steps to meet short-term labor needs.