Admission category of immigrant

Status: This standard was approved as a departmental standard on July 31, 2026.

Definition

Admission category refers to the name of the immigration program or group of programs under which an immigrant has been granted for the first time the right to live in Canada permanently by immigration authorities.

Immigrant refers to a person who is, or who has ever been, a permanent resident (landed immigrant). Such a person has been granted the right to live in Canada permanently by immigration authorities. Immigrants who have obtained Canadian citizenship by naturalization are included in this group.

Conformity to relevant internationally recognized standards

This standard conforms to the recommendations for censuses contained in the United Nations' "Conference of European Statisticians Recommendations for the 2030 round of population and housing censuses", 2025. The UN recommends to collect information on reasons for international migration such as: work or employment, family reunification, forced displacement (e.g., refugees). In addition, the "Principles and Recommendations for Population and Housing Censuses, Revision 4", 2025, recommends that the refugee population "should be enumerated" and "reported separately". This standard follows these recommendations.

This standard also conforms to the recommendations contained in the "International Recommendations on Refugee Statistics", 2018, which are the same as those referred to above.

Relation to previous version

• Admission category of immigrant July 31, 2026 to current

  The definition of the statistical unit "immigrant" has been modified.

• Admission category of immigrant November 29, 2021 to July 30, 2026

  This was the departmental standard from November 29, 2021 to July 30, 2026.