Introduction

To identify adopted immigrant children in the Immigrant, Refugees and Citizenship Canada Permanent Resident data (IRCC-PR), we developed an algorithm to screen permanent resident landing records for adoptees. We first excluded any permanent residents with a specified age at landing date of 18 or more (PERSON_AGE_ON_LANDING_DATE_ID in non-legacy landing data, PERSON_AGE_AT_LANDING_ID in legacy landing data), so only minors or those of unrecorded age were retained. In legacy landing data, we then checked IMMIGRATION_CATEGORY_LONG_ENG for values containing “adopt” in a case-insensitive substring match. In non-legacy landing data, we checked for values identifying adopted children in three variables: APPLICATION_CATEGORY_ID, FAMILY_STATUS_ID, and SPECIAL_PROGRAM_ID, by looking for values whose formatted description matches the same substring, except for a family status of adoptive parent.

Data Sources

The data used for this concept came from the following Repository databases:
• Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) – Registry Database Permanent Resident data

Variables and codes

In the legacy landing data, the process involved a simple, case-insensitive string search of the IMMIGRATION_CATEGORY_LONG_ENG variable for any substring containing "adopt".

For non-legacy landing data, the following variables and ID values were used to identify adopted children:

application_category_id
10138506. FC6-Inland - Child to be Adopted
10138509. FC9-Child Adopted by a Canadian Citizen or a Permanent Resident
10138559. SP7-ABAND CHILD. OR ORP. UNDER 13 TO BE ADOPTED
10138649. Adoption

family_status_id
4. Adopted daughter
5. Adopted son
56. Intended adoption - female
57. Intended adoption - male
66. Proposed daughter for adoption under 13
67. Proposed son for adoption under 13
94. Adopted child
100. Child to be adopted
168. Adoptive parent (excluded)
183. Adopted child

special_program_id
15346. HAG - Hague Adoptions, Regulations

Results

In our analysis of the 2025 “acqset” of IRCC-PR data for all of Canada, of a total of 9.93 million records, 4.49 million were minors, and of these remaining records, 0.86% were identified as immigrant adoptees. While the application category ID was the variable that yielded the most matches in the non-legacy data, 7.1% of the adopted children landing after 1999 were identified by the family status ID alone.