TORONTO – The migration phenomenon from Italy to Canada has slowed down sharply in recent years. To support this thesis, which in the past has been documented by the Corriere Canadese on the basis of the numbers of the Ministry of Immigration of Ottawa, is also confirmed in the data in the latest Migrantes Report, which analyzes not only the numerical consistency of arrivals and departures of individual countries, but also the historical period in which the transfer abroad from Italy took place. 

To fully understand the nature of the Italian migration phenomenon in our country, we must therefore refer to three different elements present in the annual study of the Migrantes Foundation: the seniority of registration with the Aire – the Registry Office for Italians residing abroad – the motivation that led to the registration in the register and the number of pensions that are received by Italians living outside the borders of the Belpaese. By sifting through these data and crossing them, we are able to obtain a faithful and meaningful snapshot that allows us to understand the nature and type of Italian immigration in individual countries.

Here in Canada, where 142,980 Italians with regular passports reside – about a tenth of the entire Italian-Canadian community, which in total exceeds one and a half million – the vast majority of people registered with Aire have registered for at least 15 years: this is 60.2 percent of the total. In addition, 15.5 percent occurred over a period of 10 to 15 years and 11.9 percent between the ages of 5 and 10.

We are facing, therefore, a type of migration that has had a great strength back in time and that has weakened and weakened in recent years.

But what are the reasons that led to the registration to the Aire? According to the Migrantes Report, 57.9 percent of registered people did so by expatriation, 0.9 percent by transfer and 28.8 percent by birth.

Overlapping with these two elements is the number of pensioners who receive the retirement pension from Italy. According to the Migrantes Foundation, based on the data provided in Italy by INPS itself, Canada is the second country in the world for the number of Italian resident pensioners. In Germany live 49,451 Italian pensioners, in our country 45,269, while Australia is on the podium with 36,076. Next are France (35,326), the United States (32,212), Switzerland (28,603) and Argentina (16,238).

This data, relating to social security provision, also highlights how the migration phenomenon from Italy to Canada has been substantially very strong in the past and has diminished over time. The number of pensioners is very high compared to the number of members of the Aire: in fact, 801 thousand Italians live in Germany and the number of pensioners is slightly higher than that of Canada, where Italian residents are less than 150 thousand.