Abstract
In recent years, Canada has been not only welcoming growing numbers of temporary foreign workers (TFWs), but also, increasingly, creating pathways that allow workers and their families to become permanent residents. In this paper, we use a series of unique longitudinal files to study the factors that predict a TFW’s transition to permanence. We find that age, sex, skill level and duration as a temporary resident are all important factors for understanding who obtains legal residency in Canada, but that source country wealth is not. We discuss the implications of our findings and make suggestions for future research.