What Happened to the Canada-United States Brain Drain of the 1990s? New Evidence from the 2000 US Census

This article uses the 2000 US Census to ascertain both quantitative and qualitative changes in Canadian immigrants to the United States through the 1990s, and compares these to earlier migration cohorts from census data in 1980 and 1990. Canadians in the United States continue to have higher relative salaries and education levels vis-a-vis their American counterparts, and this gap has widened in the 1990s, even when controlling for variety of labour market factors. A similar phenomenon occurred amongst immigrants from Britain and Ireland and suggests that US economic performance and immigration policy are the probable driving force behind this migration.