Discrimination Experienced by Landed Immigrants in Canada

Immigrants land in Canada with great hopes and multiple dreams, but the General Social Survey 2009 shows that one-fifth of them face discrimination in various situations once they have arrived. Ethnicity, race, language, and religion are the major grounds of discrimination. In this paper, the experiences of discrimination of landed immigrants are compared with those of nonimmigrants. A logistic regression analysis is used on GSS data to predict the probability of facing discrimination based on the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of a person. Separate models are prepared for landed immigrants and non-immigrants. Results show that immigrants are much more likely to face discrimination than non-immigrants. Visible minorities and younger persons face higher levels of discrimination compared to non-visible minorities and older persons. Irrespective of their gender, household income, language, region of domicile, and number of evening activities, landed immigrants have similar chances of facing discrimination; whereas, for non-immigrants, these characteristics make a significant difference in their experiences of discrimination.