Canada just became the number one country to offer private sponsorship programs for refugees to settle and lead a new life. This comes to show how the country is serious about its international obligations, and the role it plays in giving people a new lease of life. These private sponsorship programs offered to refugees offer personal, material and financial support in their first-year stay in Canada to make their integration to society easier.
Statistics comparing the influences of these sponsorship programs and have touched on both the employment and the earning rate aspects for both government-sponsored and private sponsored refugees between 1980-2009.
A longitudinal immigration database forms the basis of this study, and the focus being people of ages between 20 and 54 years that migrate into Canada from different parts of the world. The study aims to compare the influence of government-sponsored and privately sponsored refugees in Canada. What is more, the research considers the life of the refugees up to 15 years of their stay in Canada for consistent results.
Refugees portray a lot of diversity, especially in the aspect of human capital and other elements such as pre-migration circumstances. Therefore, there exist notable differences between government-sponsored and privately sponsored refugees. When observing the geographical distribution of these elements, a notable aspect is that privately sponsored refugees mostly arise from Eastern Europe. In contrast, government-sponsored migrate from Central America and parts of the Caribbean. Also, privately sponsored refugees portray higher levels of education than government-sponsored in various fields and mostly reside in big cities such as Toronto.
