Almost absent from political discourse until recently, temporary immigrants are now emerging in the public space because of the language they speak… or don’t speak. As the CAQ government prepares to announce immigration reforms aimed at attracting more French-speaking candidates, The duty put the temporaries under his magnifying glass. In this text: where do they come from and what languages are they likely to speak?
The population of Quebec experienced its strongest annual growth in 50 years in 2022, largely driven by the increase in temporary immigration, according to the demographic report of the Institut de la statistique du Québec published on Wednesday.
During that same year, there were at least three times more permits issued or renewed for temporary workers than for permanent residents.
They are in addition to those with multi-year permits that were already on Quebec territory. Others leave. Together, this mass forms the “workforce” of non-permanent residents, estimated at 346,000 at the start of 2023 for the province, a record.
Several categories are included in this large non-permanent box used by Statistics Canada. To become permanent residents, everyone must go through immigration programs with French language requirements. Many temporary workers face significant obstacles, both because of the limits of their study or work permit and the lack of time to complete their francization.
Foreign students
There are 62,330 study permit holders who entered into force in 2022, in addition to those already present for several years.
Both at college and university, a majority of them are enrolled in institutions where teaching is in French, ie approximately 62%. This proportion has also been on the rise since 2019, a rare year in which Indian students had supplanted the French in number. Several private colleges were then making massive recruitment efforts in India.
Conversely, the proportion of foreign students who are currently enrolled in the Anglophone network has thus increased from 55% (2019) to 38% (2023) in CEGEP, and from 43% (2019) to 37% (2023) in university, according to the most recent data provided by the Ministry of Higher Education.
Foreign students can also come from French-speaking countries, regardless of the language in which they study. France remains the country of origin of the largest contingent year after year, but several French people study in English-speaking universities.
They can also be “Francotropes”, as the Minister of Immigration, Christine Fréchette, mentioned. According to the established definition, a Francotrope is a person whose mother tongue is not French, but who comes from a culture or a region having affinities with this language.
For 2022, The duty has thus calculated that more than fifty countries of origin fall within this definition according to data from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), for a total of approximately 65% of foreign students.
Asylum seekers
In 2022, nearly 59,000 asylum applications were filed in Quebec. The first language spoken by these new applicants was Spanish, followed by Haitian Creole, Turkish and French.
They were added to those previously present in the territory, several thousand of whom are already taking francization courses without being entitled to benefits.
In the past six years, whether they arrived via Roxham Road or the airport, the majority of asylum seekers (57%) came from French-speaking or “Francotropic” countries, still according to the definition above.
Their main countries of origin for the period from 2017 to March 2023 in Quebec are, according to IRCC: Haiti, Mexico, Nigeria, India, Colombia, Turkey, Venezuela, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola.
Temporary workers: two programs
The largest category, which has grown to more than 90,000 people in 2022. There are two main programs for obtaining a temporary work permit, namely the International Mobility Program (IMP) and the Temporary Foreign Worker Program (PTET). The latter should not be confused with the general expression “temporary immigrant”, which is much broader.
The PMI is made up of 70 sub-categories such as International Experience Canada and around 30 working holiday programs. Its temporary immigrants are often graduates or “qualified,” but may also have single-employer permits. Among the nearly 52,000 PMI participants whose permit came into effect in 2022, 60% are French-speaking or Francotropic. Their first country of origin is France, followed by India, Ukraine, the United States and Mexico. The other most represented regions are Latin America and the Maghreb.
As for the TFWP, 38,425 temporary foreign workers obtained or renewed their permit in 2022. The majority of them hold jobs that do not require special training. In 2022, almost 7,000 employers in Quebec have started a hiring process for low-wage or agricultural workers.
The most numerous are from Guatemala, Mexico, the Philippines, France, Tunisia, Morocco or Colombia.
In 2018, the CAQ government withdrew the right of these low-skilled temporary workers to apply for permanent residence through the Quebec Experience Program. They are only 2.6% to have taken francization courses, according to the figures submitted during the study of the credits of the Ministry of Immigration, Francisation and Integration.