Ontario 31,685 (0.25%) British Columbia 15,950 (0.37%) Manitoba 6,420 (0.55%) | Quebec 25,040 (0.32%) Alberta 14,465 (0.41%) | |
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Mexican Canadians (Spanish: Mexicano-canadiense, French: Mexicain canadien) are Canadian citizens of Mexican ancestry or a Mexican-born person who resides in Canada. According to the National Household Survey in 2011, 96,055 Canadians indicated that they were of full or partial Mexican ancestry (0.3% of the country's population). Mexican people are the largest subgroup of Latin American Canadians.
Contents
The Mexican ancestry population in Canada is quite small despite Canada's proximity to Mexico and especially when compared to the United States where as of July 2014, there were 35,320,579 Mexican Americans comprising 11.1% of the population (see Mexican American).
Mexican Canadians trace their ancestry to Mexico, a country located in North America, bounded south from the United States; and many different European countries, especially Spain, which was its colonial ruler for over three centuries.
Demographics
The metropolitan areas with the largest populations of people with Mexican ancestry are: Greater Montreal (15,195; 0.9%), Greater Toronto Area (15,160; 0.3%), Vancouver (10,965; 0.5%), Calgary (4,865; 0.4%), Edmonton (3,630; 0.3%), Ottawa (3,165; 0.3%).
Geographical extent
Most Mexican Canadian settlement concentrations are found in metropolitan areas across Canada, with the highest concentrations in Greater Toronto and Quebec and are also present in other provinces of Canada such as British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba.
There are some Canadians with roots in the United States of America of Mexican-Texan ancestry living in Alberta; thus the so-called Mexican ethnic presence dates back to the first oil industry booms in the 1930s.
While approximately 5,000 Mexicans enter Canada each year as temporary students or contract workers for agriculture, these are not counted as immigrants because of their explicitly temporary legal status. Unlike the United States’ Bracero program, the temporary-worker program in Canada has various mechanisms to discourage workers from overstaying their permits. On the other hand, there is a moderate number of Mexican citizens who, after not being able to attain legal status in the U.S., settle in Canada to try (and in many cases succeed) to secure a much more favorable path to citizenship.
Migrant workers from Mexico are prevalent in Leamington, Ontario's cucumber and tomato harvesting industry. Leamington has one of the largest Mexican communities in Canada. There are 2,700 Mexican immigrants living in Leamington, as of 2011.
In the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, Mexican labourers are employed in the wine and orchard industries there. There is a sizable community of Mexicans living in Kelowna. In the summer of 2016, about 2,000 Mexican laborers were working on Okanagan Valley farms.