In a new report updating findings from 2022, a Statistics Canada (StatsCan) report released on January 22 reveals that there are many ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect how new immigrants are integrating when they arrive in Canada.
From the number of new immigrants* who filed taxes in 2021 to the median entry wages of newcomers who arrived in 2020, the recent StatsCan report outlines several key findings related to the economic outcomes of recent immigrants to Canada in 2021 – the second year of the pandemic.
Record low number of new immigrant tax filers in 2021
According to the 2021 tax filing records of immigrants who came to Canada in 2020, 2021 had the lowest number of new immigrants who filed taxes in Canada among any admission cohort spanning the previous 10 years.
StatsCan reasons that this outcome was “in response to the pandemic’s border restrictions.”
Therefore, for the first time in Canadian history, the majority of tax-filing immigrants among the 2020 admission cohort were individuals who had already lived in Canada (55.5%)*. The remaining 44.5% of tax-filing new immigrants did not have pre-admission experience.
