From adaptability to vulnerability: Changes in admission criteria and refugee participation in social assistance

The 2002 Immigration Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) replaced the Immigration Act, 1976 as the primary legislation guiding immigration in Canada. This article summarizes results from a recent study that compared the long-term use of social assistance among resettled refugees arriving under pre-IRPA guidelines (1997 to 2001), during the transition period (2002 to 2004), and post-IRPA (2005 to 2009). The authors used the Longitudinal immigration database (IMDB) to determine whether resettled refugees arriving after the introduction of IRPA were more likely to rely on social assistance than earlier cohorts.