I've personally lived in Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Waterloo, and London (yeah, one of those is not like the others), and I've been to many other cities both urban, and rural. The immigration boon is nearly universal across the board in all the places I have been. I've worked in 3 industries in Canada - traditional mechanical engineering, software, and astrophysics. Immigrants are extremely dominant in all three, and many of the top names are first or second-generation. I think, for the most part, Canada's immigration policy has turned out remarkably well, and needs to be commended for rather deftly avoiding the common pitfall that plagues a lot of countries: integrating immigrants into the middle class, instead of letting them fall into minority ghettos.
It's not perfect - I'm sure if you look at the data you will still see an income gap between native-born Canadians and recent immigrants, but having lived on both sides of the border I have to say America's problems are at least an order of magnitude worse than ours. The socioeconomic stratification of immigrants in the US means that several ethnicities are automatically assumed to be poor and uneducated - an assumption that largely doesn't hold water in Canada. With the sad exception of the aboriginal population, there is no real ethnic group in Canada that's as systemically impoverished and and marginalized as the blacks and latinos are in the USA. Sure, we have ghettos, but by and large they're not defined along racial and ethnic lines. The wide gaps between races in the US really does encourage a very pervasive undercurrent of racism that's largely impolite to mention in company, but easily felt. I simply do not get the same vibe in Canada, and that's a very good thing.
Having never lived in AB though, I'm interested in hearing your perspectives on it - I know the racial/ethnic balance there is not quite the same as Vancouver or Toronto, so maybe the scene is different. I can tell you that in the extremely industrial town of London, Ontario, the economic stratification between immigrants and non-immigrants can be more easily felt, but even then for the most part the poverty that pervades that city is blind to race.
It's not perfect - I'm sure if you look at the data you will still see an income gap between native-born Canadians and recent immigrants, but having lived on both sides of the border I have to say America's problems are at least an order of magnitude worse than ours. The socioeconomic stratification of immigrants in the US means that several ethnicities are automatically assumed to be poor and uneducated - an assumption that largely doesn't hold water in Canada. With the sad exception of the aboriginal population, there is no real ethnic group in Canada that's as systemically impoverished and and marginalized as the blacks and latinos are in the USA. Sure, we have ghettos, but by and large they're not defined along racial and ethnic lines. The wide gaps between races in the US really does encourage a very pervasive undercurrent of racism that's largely impolite to mention in company, but easily felt. I simply do not get the same vibe in Canada, and that's a very good thing.
Having never lived in AB though, I'm interested in hearing your perspectives on it - I know the racial/ethnic balance there is not quite the same as Vancouver or Toronto, so maybe the scene is different. I can tell you that in the extremely industrial town of London, Ontario, the economic stratification between immigrants and non-immigrants can be more easily felt, but even then for the most part the poverty that pervades that city is blind to race.