"This paper uses pooled 1971, 1981, and 1986 Canadian census data to evaluate the extent to which (1) the earnings of Canadian immigrants at the time of immigration fall short of the earnings of comparable Canadian-born individuals, and (2) immigrants' earnings grow more rapidly over time than those of the Canadian born. Variations in the labour market assimilation of immigrants according to their gender and country of origin are also analysed. The results suggest that recent immigrant cohorts have had more difficulty being assimilated into the Canadian labour market than earlier ones, an apparent consequence of recent changes in Canadian immigration policy, labour market discrimination against visible minorities, and the prolonged recession of the early 1980s." (SUMMARY IN FRE)

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Financial assistance provided by the University of Ottawa and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council is gratefully acknowledged. We thank Troy Joseph for his very capable research assistance and two anonymous referees for their comments.

"Between 1976 and 1981 many pople moved out of Quebec, especially anglophones. To the extent that a person's decision to stay or to move may be related to earnings prospects, earnings comparisons with individuals who lived in Quebec in 1981 may suffer from a selection bias. This paper analyses emigration from Quebec and earnings with a two-equation model, using a sample of men drawn from the from the 1981 [Canadian] census. It is found that a selection bias is indeed present for anglophones and that the returns to learning French may be underestimated when that bias is ignored."

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