Immigrant earnings growth: selection bias or real progress?

We use longitudinal tax data linked to immigrant landing records to study the effect of selective attrition on the estimated earnings assimilation of immigrants to Canada. Contrary to findings in the existing international literature, we show that the immigrantnative earnings gap closes at the same pace in longitudinal and crosssectional data. Lowearning immigrants are likely to leave the crosssectional samples over time, but the same is true for the native born. Our study suggests that immigrants to Canada have labour market participation dynamics similar to those of the native born.