Term: Country of Last Permanent Residence

Glossary Definition

Last Updated: 2025-07-18

Definition:

The country where the immigrant (secondary immigrant) last resided for at least 6 months prior to immigrating to Canada, as defined in the Immigrant, Refugees and Citizenship Canada Permanent Resident data (IRCC-PR). This should be distinguished from "country of birth" and "country of citizenship".

Country of last permanent residence is a variable that can be found in both the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) Registry Database Permanent Resident data files, but the variable name is different in each file, as follows:

IRCC File Name	Variable Name in 2023 & later versions	Variable Name in 2019 version
LEGACY LANDING	COUNTRY_OF_LAST_PR_CD	COUNTRY_OF_LAST_PERMANENT_RESIDE
LANDING	Not available	COUNTRY_OF_RESIDENCE

• Country of last permanent residence denotes the country where an individual was considered a permanent resident, and labelling of race, culture or ethnicity should not be used or inferred without a strong rationale.
  
• As with most numeric codes used in the LEGACY LANDING and LANDING files, the codes used in each file have different values and have their own unique formats to convert codes to country names.
• Not only did the LEGACY LANDING variable name change between the 2019 and 2023 versions, the type changed from numeric to character in 2023.
  
• The removal of this variable in 2023 and later versions of current LANDING data limits its usefulness in research (such as for tracking secondary migration). These variables are also not available in temporary resident files.

Related concepts 

• Immigration / Migration Overview - Links to Immigration / Migration Data and Related Concepts and Glossary Terms

Related terms 

• Country of Birth
• Country of Citizenship
• Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) Registry Data
• Secondary Migration

References 

• Wanigaratne S, Rashid M, Gagnon A, Cole DC, Shakya Y, Moineddin R, Blake J, Yudin MH, Campbell D, Ray JG, Urquia ML. Refugee mothers, migration pathways and HIV: A population-based cohort study. AIDS Care 2019;Epub ahead of print. [Abstract] (View)
• Wanigaratne S, Cole DC, Bassil K, Hyman I, Moineddin R, Urquia ML. The influence of refugee status and secondary migration on preterm birth. J Epidemiol Community Health 2016;70(6):622-628. [Abstract] (View)

Term used in 

• Ewesesan R, Chartier MJ, Nickel NC, Wall-Wieler E, Urquia ML. Psychosocial and behavioral health indicators among immigrant and non-immigrant recent mothers. BMC Pregnancy Childbirth 2022;22(1):612. [Abstract] (View)
• Urquia M, Walld R, Prior H, Detillieux G, Eze N, Koseva I. The Diversity of Immigrants to Manitoba, Migration Dynamics and Basic Healthcare Service Use. Winnipeg, MB: Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, 2020. [Report] [Summary] [Additional Materials] (View)
• Urquia ML, Walld R, Wanigaratne S, Eze ND, Azimaee M, McDonald JT, Guttmann A. Linking national immigration data to provincial repositories: The case of Canada. Int J Popul Data Sci 2021;6(1):1412. [Abstract] (View)