Effect of Immigration on the Canadian Population: Replacement Migration?

Immigration has a substantial influence on the size and growth of the population and the labour force, and also considerable influence on the socio-cultural composition, as seen through ethnicity, language and visible minority status. Given the uneven distribution of immigrants over regions, and their subsequent re-migration patterns, immigration accentuates the growth of the largest cities. Immigration enhances the educational profile of the population, but controlling for age, immigrants now have lower proportions in the labour force, lower average income and higher proportions with low income status. Replacement migration can be defined in various ways. An immigration of about 225,000 would prevent population decline in the foreseeable future, and with slightly higher participation would prevent decline of the labour force. It is impossible to use immigration to prevent an increase in the population aged 65 and over as a ratio to the population aged 20-64. Immigration can somewhat be seen as replacing the socioeconomic distribution of the population, though to a lesser extent over time as the Canadianborn have various advantages. But immigration cannot be seen to be replacing the existing geographic distribution of the population, nor its socio-cultural composition. Since fertility has been at levels below replacement, there has been the idea of using immigrants as a substitute for births. For instance, in Fertility in Canada: From Baby-boom to Baby-bust, Romaniuc (1984: 94) presents scenarios on the number of immigrants needed to achieve a one percent growth rate in the population, at specified levels of fertility from 1.4 to 2.5. Ryder (1997) uses the concept of replacement migration in the sense of the level of migration that would achieve the same ultimate population size as we would achieve if fertility were at replacement levels. The concept of replacement migration has especially gained currency through a United Nations (2000) study entitled, Replacement Migration: Is it a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations? Using as examples eight countries plus the Europe and the European Union as aggregates, the United Nations study establishes scenarios that would achieve three goals: maintain the size of the total population, maintaining the size of the working age population, and maintaining the ratio of the population aged 15-64 to that 65 and over. The latter seeks to determine if immigration could be used to prevent population aging. The idea of using immigration “to keep the population the way it was” can be used not only with regard to maintaining a certain growth rate, or avoiding decline, or preventing aging, but also with regard to regional distribution, even ethnic or linguistic composition, and socioeconomic composition. These are the topics will be considered to explore how migration could bring forms of replacement that would keep the population more similar to what it has been in the past. It is important to recognize the disadvantages of this point of departure. In particular, the concept of replacement migration puts an undue emphasis on demographic goals in talking about the future. It can also lead to a view that immigration is the only policy variable that can be manipulated (Lutz and Scherbov, 2002). At the same time, there is the common perception that immigration is somehow “needed” from a demographic point of view. For instance, the first