Chapter 3 – Monitoring Immigrant Retention
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Beyond the variety of contexts, however, certain guidelines can be established. Table 7 provides an overview of some selection and integration measures, suggesting new roads and enhancing the effectiveness of existing ones.
Successful immigration depends on two broad factors: a) selecting an adequate number of people who are likely to succeed and b) giving them the kind of support that will ensure their successful integration. Successful immigration also means that the community that is meant to benefit from it actually does. Table 7 proposes different areas of intervention, each with a target and a verification mechanism.
On the selection side, there should be a general focus on the overall number of Francophone immigrants entering the country. Clear targets by province/territory ought to be established for each year and then be compared with the number of people actually landed. But this is not enough. In order to be able to verify success, one needs to understand how many official language minority immigrants have actually remained within their communities over the years.
Even if it may seem difficult to measure immigration success and an immigrant's participation within a community's infrastructure, it is essential for gaining at least an understanding of whether immigration is working to the benefit of Canada's linguistic minorities. To this end, Citizenship and Immigration Canada should consider establishing an Immigrant Retention Index which would help to verify the measures proposed in Table 7. Such an index would be based on regular surveys among immigrants who are at different stages in their integration process. The following information would help to estimate integration success:
- Number of children of immigrants enrolled in minority schools.
- Government services being used by immigrants.
- Community services (social services, health) being used by immigrants.
These indicators, obtained from school boards, government offices, service providers and researchers, would provide the type of information that could be summarized in a region-specific Immigrant Retention Index. It would indicate, on a longitudinal basis, the number of newcomers who have stayed actively attached to their official minority language community.
Settlement Monitoring (Recommendation 3)
In order to evaluate the effectiveness of attracting immigrants into official language minority communities, the Federal Government should establish a long-term monitoring mechanism. Such a mechanism would not only allow it to report on the number of newly arriving immigrants but would be able to assess the retention of immigrants within official language minority communities.
As we conclude this study, let us review three promising approaches that governments and communities should be considering to increase the number and retention of official language minority immigrants.
- Provincial Nominee Programs: more targeted selection through community involvement.
- Regionalization: greater geographic dispersion through employment incentives.
- Qualification recognition: Faster contribution through faster economic integration.
