Study finds 41 per cent of immigrants remit money to friends or relatives abroad during their first four years in Canada

A latest survey report by Statistics Canada shows that roughly four in ten immigrants who arrived in Canada during 2000/2001 sent money to family or friends abroad at least once during their first four years in the country.

The Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC) was conducted jointly by Statistics Canada and Citizenship and Immigration Canada. It was designed to study the incidence of remitting, amounts and the characteristics of remitters that followed a group of 12,000 newcomers, aged 15 or older, who arrived in Canada between October 1, 2000 and September 30, 2001, over a four-year period.

This first national study of immigrants' remittances found that over the entire period of four years, about 41 per cent of immigrants sent money home at least once: Within 6 to 24 months of landing, 23 per cent of immigrants had sent remittances to their home country; within 2 to 4 years after landing, about 29 per cent had done so.

Among those who sent money home, the average amount was $2,500 in the first period, and $2,900 in the second period. Those who came under the economic class as skilled workers, investors and entrepreneurs topped the list by sending an average $3,000 abroad, compared with $2,700 for family-class immigrants and $1,900 for refugees.

It could be translated anywhere between $1.5 billion and $2 billion that Canadians remitted in each of the last four years.

The incidence of sending money varied considerably from country to country or by place of birth. Some 60 per cent of immigrants from the Philippines and Haiti sent remittances two to four years after landing. About 40 to 50 per cent of immigrants from Jamaica, Nigeria, Romania, Guyana and Ukraine sent money. However, less than 10 per cent of immigrants from industrialized nations like France, the United Kingdom and South Korea did so.

The likelihood of immigrants remitting depended on three additional factors — their income, family obligations in Canada and abroad, and demographics. Remittances accounted for 7.5 per cent of the remitter's annual personal income and 3.4 per cent of family income during a newcomer's first two years in the country. Immigrants who had family incomes of $70,000 or more were more than three times as likely to send money home as those with family incomes of less than $10,000. In addition, the amount sent by immigrants in families with incomes of $70,000 or more was about 45 per cent higher than the amount for those with incomes of $25,000 to $44,999.

At the demographic front, immigrants with three or more children at home were far less likely to send money abroad than those with no children. Moreover, women sent about 12 per cent less than men. Also, immigrants aged from 25 to 44 were far more likely to send money abroad, and far higher amounts, than those in younger or older age groups.

According to World Bank figures for 2004, remittances represent an important source of revenue for people in developing countries. They accounted for about 20 to 30 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in countries such as Haiti, Lesotho and Jordan, and for about 10 to 19 per cent in several others, such as Jamaica, the Philippines and the Dominican Republic. The worldwide money flows to developing countries increased to US$167 billion in 2005, an estimated 73 per cent jump from 2001. The top remittance-receiving countries in the world are India (US$21.7 billion), China (US$21.4 billion) and Mexico (US$18.1 billion).