Beating the Rush

I was sur­prised, but not all that much by this arti­cle, pub­lished today in the Van­cou­ver Province:

Brain Drain a Thing of the Past as Amer­i­cans Flood In
(To quote Nor­ma Green­away of the Can­West News Ser­vice:)

OTTAWA — The num­ber of Amer­i­cans admit­ted to Cana­da last year hit a 30-year high, fuelling a pat­tern that sug­gests the drain of Cana­di­an brains south of the bor­der may be a shrink­ing phe­nom­e­non.

The num­ber of Amer­i­cans accept­ed in Cana­da reached 10,942 in 2006, almost dou­ble the num­ber admit­ted in 2000. By con­trast, the num­ber of Cana­di­ans admit­ted to the Unit­ed States in 2006 dropped sharply from the pre­vi­ous year, falling to 23,913 from 29,930.

The data were gath­ered and analysed by the Mon­tréal-based Asso­ci­a­tion for Cana­di­an Stud­ies. Exec­u­tive direc­tor Jack Jed­wab says an analy­sis of the num­bers shows Cana­da is enjoy­ing an upswing as a pre­ferred des­ti­na­tion for Amer­i­cans, many of whom are increas­ing­ly well edu­cat­ed.

Also, the trend is reflect­ed in the reverse (i.e. Cana­di­ans mov­ing to the US, New Zeland — see New Zealand Van Lines Ltd) as well, and leads to the fol­low­ing net num­bers:

Jed­wab cit­ed fig­ures that showed the U.S. accept­ed 4,447 more eco­nom­ic immi­grants from Cana­da in 2006 than the U.S. accept­ed from Cana­da. That was down from 14,223 in 2005, a year the U.S. opened its doors wider to immi­grants, and down from 6,916 in 2004.

I’m going to assume that first sen­tence should have read: the U.S. accept­ed 4,447 more eco­nom­ic immi­grants from Cana­da in 2006 than Cana­da accept­ed from the U.S. (oth­er­wise, it doesn’t make sense).

If this is the case, immi­gra­tion could be fol­low­ing the same route as the dol­lar, lead­ing to at least par­i­ty, and then per­haps the sit­u­a­tion where there are more peo­ple mov­ing to Cana­da from the U.S. than the oth­er way around. Also, the peo­ple who are mov­ing are typ­i­cal­ly the kind who would have moved the oppo­site direc­tion in the past:

In 2006, 4,498 peo­ple were admit­ted as eco­nom­ic immi­grants, which means they need to col­lect suf­fi­cient points to gain entry. This nar­row­ly also out­paced the 4,468 immi­grants brought in under fam­i­ly-reuni­fi­ca­tion rules.

“Cana­da is undoubt­ed­ly nar­row­ing the brain drain,” Jed­wab said. “The most edu­cat­ed class of immi­grants we’re get­ting right now is com­ing from the Unit­ed States.”

We sus­pect­ed this might be the case from anec­do­tal evi­dence, but now it looks like it’s borne out in the actu­al num­bers. It will be inter­est­ing to see if the ‘sur­prise’ I some­times get from Cana­di­ans when I tell them our sto­ry will fade.