Page 68 [68]
OCR
CHRIS KOSTOV organizations, their lack of interest in the traditional historical debates over Macedonia and the political future of Bulgaria, which preoccupied the minds of the old immigrants, led to a rift with the old generation.” After 1995, Canadian immigration officers applied stricter rules on applicants for refugee status from Bulgaria and other former communist countries in Eastern Europe. Even though some Bulgarians continued to seek refugee status, their number decreased. After 1996, a new wave of immigrants started to come from Bulgaria to Canada. This wave primarily included workers, who were selected under the Canadian points’ system as highly skilled professionals, as well as some people who came under the family category. These professionals included IT and mechanical engineers, medical doctors, university professors, economists, scientists, lawyers, etc. They were primarily economic immigrants because in 1996-97 Bulgaria was hit by its worst inflation rates since the end of the Cold War. In January 1997, the US dollar reached 2,000 leva and the minimum wage was 5,500 leva/ hour, i.e. less than three US dollars. Hence, leaving the country was, for many Bulgarians, not a whim but a matter of survival. These new post-Cold War waves of Bulgarians added to the number of Bulgarians in Ontario. If the number of Bulgarian Canadians in Ontario was merely 1,615 in 1991,** it peaked at 6,665 in the 1996 Canadian Census. Even though half of them settled in Toronto, the rest of the 12,390 Bulgarian immigrants in Canada in 1996 lived across the land, including a few in Newfoundland and in Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary and Vancouver.’ Figure 2 also indicates that the Bulgarian immigration to Canada reached its peak in 2004, when 1,945 Bulgarians landed as Permanent Residents and their number started to drop rapidly especially after 2007, when Bulgaria joined the EU. In 2015, only 371 Bulgarian immigrants came to Canada. Romanian immigration follows the same trend. Thus, Bulgarian and Romanian economic immigrants started to choose a faster and easier way to leave their countries, by moving to Western Europe, taking advantage of the EU Free Market. The number of Italians and Greeks immigrating to Canada is also insignificant, especially considering the large waves of Italian and Greek immigrants to Canada in earlier periods. As Figure 2 indicates, only Ukraine, which is not an EU member, still sends a steady flow of immigrants to Canada. % George Mladenoy, interviewed by the author, 2 May 2007. 53 Nadezhda Hristova, Imigraciya v Kanada [Immigration to Canada], Sofiya: Vazov Publishing, 2000, 8-11. 54 Census of Canada, 1991, The Nation, 18. 55 Census of Canada, 1996, Census Profile of Federal Electoral Districts (1996 Representation): Age, Sex, Marital Status, Common-Law unions, Family Characteristics, Type of Dwelling and Household size, Immigration and Citizenship, and Languages, Ottawa, Statistics Canada, 1998, 137. 56 Ibid. * 66°
