Why Atlantic Canadian immigrants fared better than others in the pandemic

The pandemic did not take as heavy a toll on the mental health of immigrants in Atlantic Canada as it did on other Canadians, according to a Statistics Canada survey.

Immigrants in Atlantic Canada were more likely to tell researchers that their mental health had gotten better rather than worse since the start of the pandemic. This was not the case for non-immigrant Atlantic Canadians or immigrants in other parts of the country.

The Statistics Canada survey, taken in 2022 with results published this spring, found 30 per cent of immigrants in Atlantic Canada reported better mental health compared to pre-pandemic times, and only 22.7 per cent reported feeling worse.

In that same study, more than 30 per cent of other Atlantic Canadians reported their mental health was worse after that experience, not better, while only a few more than 10 per cent said it had improved. Nationally, immigrants reported better mental health than non-immigrants, but the difference was not as pronounced as it was in Atlantic Canada.

Raquel Hoersting, a psychology professor at the University of Prince Edward Island with a specialty in mental health and culture, described immigrants as a unique population.

"Here's someone who has a lot of, often, grit, a lot of strength, a lot of resilience, to be able to move, to be able to establish a whole new life in a new country," said Hoersting.

Paul Musa, president of the Nigerian Canadian Association of Prince Edward Island, said anyone willing to seek out that level of change in their lives is better positioned to face hardship.

"They must have developed themselves mentally, socially, to be able to cope with whatever challenge they encounter on their journey to greener pasture," said Musa.

He described the mentality this way: "This journey, I'm ready to go through whatever I face, whatever challenge that comes my way."

'We were right on it'

Immigrants also have a heightened sense of community, said Hoersting.

It is a sense that is bolstered by organizations like Musa's, and in Atlantic Canada some of those organizations rallied to support their members even before the pandemic was declared in March of 2020.

Atousa Costandi, board member and secretary for the Iranian Cultural Society of Nova Scotia, said her group saw how COVID-19 was hitting their home country and began making preparations before Canada really started to feel the effects.

The society connected with doctors who were immigrants from Iran, who began translating public health information into Farsi. When quarantine requirements were put in place, it found rooms for new arrivals from Iran.

"We were right on it. We were trying to get sanitizer and masks to people, especially people who were new in town," said Costandi.

There were vulnerable people or seniors who couldn't leave home, so we helped them with groceries...We tried to help, to help our community.— Atousa Costandi

"We were able to get them and we spread it amongst [those] who needed it. And of course there were vulnerable people or seniors who couldn't leave home, so we helped them with groceries with our Helping Hands group. We tried to help, to help our community."

The association's annual cultural celebration in the spring of 2020 was cancelled, but it arranged online events featuring local artists and artists from Iran. It set up online programs for children so that they could play, read, and otherwise interact with each other.

"That kept our community together during the COVID," said Costandi. "We're still hearing about that. They're still talking about, 'You guys were great and the programs were great.'"

Calling home

While the resilience of immigrants and strong community ties may explain why immigrants coped with the pandemic better than other Canadians, it doesn't explain why newcomers to the Atlantic had a better experience than immigrants in other parts of Canada — or a better time than non-newcomer Prince Edward Islanders, who also have a strong sense of community.

"A lot of people who live here, and who have lived here for many generations, have very close, intricate connections with each other, and social networks," said Hoersting.

But those close connections are different for Islanders born and raised in the province, as opposed to those who immigrated, she said. Native Islanders are accustomed to close, in-person contact with their social groups.

"The pandemic made it so you had to cut some of those networks. You couldn't visit with people," said Hoersting.

"That was a bigger impact for them than for immigrants, who already had created a much smaller social network by moving here."

Immigrants, who were in the habit of keeping connections strong through calls back to their home countries, were also already primed for the remote communication required to keep in touch during the height of the pandemic.

Immigrant paradox

As for why immigrants on the East Coast did better than those in the rest of the country, Hoersting lays the credit on what is known as the immigrant paradox.

While you might expect someone completely uprooted and placed in a new environment to struggle, the opposite is true.

"Immigrants who are more recent arrivals, they outperform established immigrants or non-immigrants in a lot of different indices, like job or health or crime or mental health," said Hoersting.

This is likely because most immigrants have moved by choice. These are not random people who were uprooted by circumstances. They are people who uprooted themselves.

"These people are coming here to P.E.I. to make it work. They're coming for, hopefully, a better life. They're sacrificing a lot. They're doing it to improve their life. So when they come here, you bet that they're doing their best to make it work," said Nathaly Munoz, president of the Latinos Association of P.E.I.

"There's not necessarily a second option, so they have to be optimistic. They've given everything up."

This is significant for Atlantic Canada because the region has a higher proportion of recent immigrants than other parts of the country.

According to the 2021 census, Canada is home to more than 8 million immigrants, and 29 per cent of them had arrived since 2011. In Atlantic Canada, 44 per cent of immigrants had arrived in the decade before the census recorded their presence.

The theory that new immigrants are more resilient than their more established counterparts also seems to play out in the three Prairie provinces, though to not as large a degree as it did in Atlantic Canada.

On the Prairies, 42 per cent of immigrants recorded in the census had landed in Canada between 2011 and 2021. Better mental health was reported by 24 per cent of immigrants on the Prairies, and only 25 per cent reported it was worse.