As a former statistics student, I immediately recognized the Simpson’s Paradox present in these findings. A classic dilemma in statistical studies, it is a phenomenon where trends at a group level are the exact or nearly the exact opposite of the overall trend when the groups are combined. This phenomenon is apparent in this publication, where the authors noted that while general immigrants tend to have higher educational attainment than the general population, the trend completely reverses when subdividing immigrants into various categories. In particular, the discrepancy between first and second-generation immigrants in terms of educational attainment, as well as between private and government-sponsored refugees, and between migrants entering through the Live-In Caregiver Program and other channels, are very daunting. The conclusions drawn from this study should be studied and investigated further, not only to push back potential anti-immigrant narratives that misleadingly claim that immigrants are better off than “Canadians”, but to also better understand socioeconomic dynamics of migrant communities in Canada. For example, the authors noted that the Live-In Caregiver Program is heavily Filipinized, which then follows that educational attainment for children of immigrants taking part of the Live-In Caregiver Program should be of huge concern for that community.

The very last paragraph stated the following: “Theoretical and empirical studies originating primarily from the United States suggest that the local communities where immigrants live influence whom their children interact with, and this affects their children’s identity, social norms and motivations. Whether the same applies to Canada remains to be carefully examined.” This is absolutely an important matter to follow-up on. With some migrant communities starting to show some dispersion in their migration patterns (e.g., some have started to settle in more rural communities rather than the larger metropolitan areas such as the Greater Toronto Area and Metro Vancouver, others have leaned towards Atlantic Canada as a result of government initiatives), it becomes even more important that intercommunity dynamics be studied further.