Family Visa

1. Families are crucial to the social and economic incorporation of newcomers. Because of the overall lack of explicit public policies for the integration of new immigrants, families and ethnic communities have traditionally acted, together with the workplace, as powerful integrating institutions. In particular, ethnic communities and families operate as sources of critical resources for newcomers, including opportunities for employment, access to credit, and different kinds of support. In other words, when newcomers arrive on a family-based visa, they have resources readily available to help them navigate the system and become employed or start their own businesses.

2. Family-based immigration has a positive impact on business development and community improvement. Family ties facilitate the formation of immigrant communities which, in turn, offer a fertile environment for the development of businesses. In this regard, “case-study evidence finds that extended immigrant families and close-knit immigrant communities ease the economic assimilation of new immigrants and promote investment in human capital as well as the formation of businesses.”

3. Immigrants who come to the country on a family-based visa tend to move up the socio-economic ladder. The initial differences in earnings between family-based and employment-based immigrants tend to narrow dramatically over time. Despite concerns about the supposedly lower productivity of kinship-based immigrants in the labour market, it has been shown that “non-occupation-based immigration, most of which is family-based, is associated with lower entry earnings but higher earnings growth than occupation-based immigration. The higher estimated earnings growth is sufficient for non-occupation-based immigrants to catch up with occupationally admitted immigrants after eleven to eighteen years.”

4. Brothers and sisters of who immigrate under the family fourth-preference visa tend to experience high rates of self-employment and high earnings growth. Research on the economic benefits of immigrants admitted as siblings of citizens has shown that there are not only humanitarian but economic reasons to keep this category. Immigrants who are admitted as siblings of citizens tend also to have higher initial earnings than family-admitted immigrants in general. In addition, the immigrant group with higher fourth-preference admissions appear to experience higher earnings growth over time. These results further suggest that any proposal to remove the sibling admission category would be counter-productive.

5. Family admissions are critical for the “care economy,” which is fundamental for the well-being of household members, helps sustain the current and future workforce, and facilitates women’s labour force participation.

• Unpaid health and child care provided in the household largely by immigrant women contribute to the physical, cognitive, and emotional development of household members. Those contributions are instrumental not only to individual well-being but also to the human development of the country.

• Because unpaid household and community activities are performed outside the market, they are largely invisible in economic statistics. Groups such as the Pan American Health Organization and the International Labour Organization have highlighted the importance of recognizing the role of unpaid work in the household and the community.

• Immigrant women who perform their work in the domestic sphere help sustain the current workforce, raise the future workforce, care for the elderly and sick, and play a critical role in household well-being. Their contributions to the economy are, therefore, not only immediate, but will be felt in the future.

• The economic value of unpaid work performed by immigrants represents a very large portion of the gross domestic product. In particular, “the statistics on time use in different countries suggest that unpaid work contributes to well-being, human capacity building, and long‑term economic growth while accounting for the highest number of working hours, which may represent over 50% of the gross domestic product.”

• Immigrant women’s participation in the labour force is facilitated by the presence in the home of other relatives. In other words, when other family members (such as parents or siblings) can take care of everyday household needs, women are more likely to participate in the labour market. Family-admitted immigrants who can provide care for the children or the elderly at home are, therefore, a valuable asset for women who work for a salary.