Introduction

The most reliable method to identify immigrants using data in the Manitoba Population Repository is to use Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) Registry Permanent Resident Data (IRCC-PR) and Temporary Resident Permit Data (IRCC-TRP). Temporary resident permits are used to enter Canada for a short-term stay, usually 6 months, most commonly for study or work, though temporary permits can be granted for other reasons as well. Permanent resident status is granted to immigrants who successfully apply to enter Canada for a long term or permanent stay. Depending on the immigrant population that is the focus of your research, you may wish to include either or both sources of data to identify immigrants among your study population.

There are two SAS® macros that can be used to simplify the task of extracting data from these two sources: %get_ircc_pr extracts and combines IRCC-PR landing records from two time periods (legacy 1985-1999 data, and current non-legacy data from 2000 onwards), and %get_ircc_trp extracts and combines IRCC-TRP records from those two time periods (with the legacy period data going as far back as 1980) and across three permit datasets. The three TRP datasets are SP for study permits, WP for work permits of 3 specific work permit types, and MP for other temporary permits. While WP, SP, and MP datasets all share the same structure and variables, and can readily be combined, they are still distinguished by specific permit type ID values, allowing the data to be separated again if necessary for data analysis. The datasets for the legacy and current time periods are quite distinct from each other, though, with different variable names, encodings, and formats, but the macros will build some common variables from the two time periods to simplify simple cases of analyses of these data spanning both periods. For more advanced analyses, requiring more than the standard set of harmonized variables, separate parameters allow selection of additional variables from the two time periods as required.

When combining data from both PR and TRP records, it’s important to keep in mind that there are important differences between them, which will affect how you choose to combine and summarize the data from these sources. Due to the temporary nature of TRP records, it is very common for an individual to have multiple permit records. For PR landing records, most commonly there will only be one per individual, though it is possible to have two or more. When combining and summarizing, you may want to record whether a person had temporary permits, whether they became a permanent resident, the first arrival in Canada (earliest SIGN_DT or LANDING_DT), etc. While sample code may provide an example to follow, this will usually require customization for your research goals. If all you are looking for is a simple, binary indicator of immigrant status, then the presence of any of these records (e.g., keeping the first one) may be sufficient. The first sign date and/or landing date could be compared to a given index date to determine if the person is a recent immigrant.

Data Sources

The data used for this concept came from the following Repository databases:

• Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) – Registry Database Permanent Resident and Temporary Resident Permit data
• Manitoba Health Insurance Registry data, as an alternative method

It is possible to identify immigrants in Manitoba by checking for certain values of the COVCODE variable in the health insurance registry. However, this variable does not make a distinction between Canadian-born individuals and immigrants who arrived from another Canadian province or territory. As such, it is a less reliable indicator of immigrant status than IRCC data. The IRCC data also contains a wealth of other information beyond simple immigrant status. A combination of the COVCODE and the first coverage start date could be used to determine newcomer or recent immigrant status.

Limitations

The following limitations were identified during development of this concept:
• IRCC-PR data before 1985, and TRP data before 1980, are not available. It is difficult to reliably establish immigrant status before January 1, 1985.
• The macros can operate on IRCC data from 2023 and more recent acquisitions. The 2019 version of the data is not supported by this code.

Methods

The SAS® macros can be invoked as follows:

%get_ircc_pr(cohort=, acqdt=, acqset=, out=, debug=, keepll=, keepcl=, fstlanddt=, lstlanddt=, dup=, lib=);
%get_ircc_trp(cohort=, acqdt=, acqset=, out=, debug=, keeplt=, keepct=, ptypes=, refugees=, fstsigndt=, lstsigndt=, dup=, lib=);

Both macros use named parameters, so you only need to specify the ones that do not define the value you want to use by default. To harmonize data from the two time periods in IRCC data, these macros will set the COB_ID and COC_ID variables to appropriate country ID values in the legacy time period, by converting the corresponding country names to the corresponding IDs. The PERSON_UCID_CD variable will also be set to the FOSS_CLIENT_ID value in legacy data. They also set the BIRTH_REGION variable to the corresponding Statistics Canada CAI region for the person’s country of birth. Additionally, %get_ircc_pr will set APPLICATION_CATEGORY_ID in legacy data to the ID value corresponding to the legacy immigration category short code, and set APPLICATION_NO to the value of APPLICATION_CODE_NO. In non-legacy landing data, %get_ircc_pr will set the legacy variables IMMIGRATION_CATEGORY_SHORT_ENG to the short code corresponding to the application category ID, IMMIGRATION_CATEGORY4_ENG to the legacy immigrant group corresponding to the application category ID categorized by the application_main_category format, and IMMIGRATION_CLASS_ENG to the legacy class of the application category ID categorized by the application_component_desc format.

To determine an immigrant’s refugee status, %get_ircc_pr will set the REFUGEE_CLASS variable to one of 4 refugee classifications (PSR, GAR, BVOR, Protected-persons), or to Non-refugee, based on the application category ID value.

If the %get_ircc_trp macro is called with refugees=Y, it will set two variables based on permit classifications or special programs associated with refugees: REFUGEE_PERMIT_FLG is set to 1 if the legacy permit classifications for level 2 or level 4 contain the word “refugee”, or if the non-legacy classification ID is 174, 175, or 220, and REFUGEE_PROGRAM_FLG is set to 1 if the legacy special program level 2 classification, or the formatted value for the non-legacy special program ID, contains the word “refugee”, but not “refused refugee”. Because these indicators require string searches, by default they will not be set, to speed up processing of temporary permit data.

For further information on the use of these macros, see the documentation for them in ImmigrationMacros.pptx (PowerPoint slide show) – internal only.