WHEN they immigrated to Canada from the Philippines more than a decade ago, it was a family connection that initially drew Alvin Koh Relleve and his wife to the area.
Today, many of the same community connections are what continue to bring Filipinos to the area.
Usually, "They know somebody here or they have a relative here," said Relleve, a North Shore resident and a driving force behind North Vancouver's annual Philippine Arts and Culture Festival. "The first need they have is the need to belong."
Many Filipinos will attend church to make connections too, he said. "They know they will find Filipinos there."
"The North Shore has a reputation of being a good place to raise a family."
The growing population of Filipinos on the North Shore is just part of the overall picture of immigration that emerged from a release of 2011 census information from Statistics Canada last week.
Immigrants now make up anywhere from 30 per cent to 40 per cent of the population, with higher numbers of immigrants in both West Vancouver and the City of North Vancouver than the District of North Vancouver. That's above the B.C. average of 28 per cent, although less than some other areas of Metro Vancouver.
Those percentages are relatively stable compared to census figures from 2006 - although a change in the way data is collected makes comparisons difficult.
In the City of North Vancouver, immigrants make up 37 per cent of the population, while visible minorities account for about 30 per cent. About 4,000 of the 17,760 people born outside the country arrived in the last five years. Those from Iran were the largest group, making up 18 per cent of the immigrant population. Filipinos made up almost 15 per cent of immigrants.
In West Vancouver, immigrants now make up 40 per cent of the population, although that statistic includes people who immigrated from the United Kingdom many years ago. The other largest immigrant groups include those from Iran and China.
Visible minorities make up 28 per cent of the population, with Farsi, Mandarin and Chinese the most common non-official languages spoken at home.
Relleve said many Filipinos on the North Shore work as caregivers, or in the health-care or food industries. Many of the more recent immigrants have come to Canada under the temporary foreign worker program, he said, with the eventual goal of becoming permanent residents and bringing their families to Canada.
Elizabeth Jones, executive director of the North Shore Multicultural Society, said her organization has been busy, helping about 3,500 newcomers in the past year.
Immigrants from Iran, China and Korea continue to make up the largest numbers of clients, said Jones. About a third of those people enter the country as skilled workers, a third come as business class immigrants and about a quarter come as family members, she said. More than 65 per cent of the clients her organization sees have a university education - although due to Canadian regulatory requirements, that isn't always a lot of help in finding employment.
One big change in the immigration statistics is the data now comes from a voluntary form - as opposed to a previously mandatory questionnaire.
Statisticians acknowledge it makes the information less reliable.
Jones shares the worries of some bureaucrats that the new voluntary forms are "counting out" some immigrants the forms are intended to register - and may lead to funding troubles down the road.
"If your language skills aren't high and that comes to your door, are you going to be filling in a voluntary form, in English, that's multiple pages long?" she asked.
