Immigration policy and immigrant quality: empirical evidence from Canada

"This paper examines the earnings of foreign-born and native-born men [in Canada] in an attempt to evaluate whether the decline in the quality [based on earnings] of Canadian immigrants is related to changes in the country-of-origin mix and the class (type) mix of immigrants....The analysis consists of two parts. The first part is based on individual data on earnings and socio-economic characteristics collected in the 1971 and 1986 Canadian Censuses.... In the second part of the analysis, additional regression equations are estimated, pertaining to the period 1968 to 1985, that relate these Census-based measures of immigrant quality to the country-of-origin and class mix of immigrants." The impact of changes brought about by the 1967 restructuring of the Canadian immigration system is analyzed.