As well, another factor when considering the success of immigrants is skin colour. To be blunt, have lighter= more acceptence/opportunities.
That's a simplifying and probably wrong statement imho, for two reasons.
First, ethnic and racial discrimination are artefacts of their time. Even if it were today true that, as you say, "lighter skinned" ethnic groups = more acceptance/opportunities, the way that tracked is certainly not constant historically. The Eastern European Jews cited above, to be equally blunt, faced the kind of overt discrimination -- barred from certain public places, limited by university quotas, explicitly discriminated against in admission to and hiring within the professions -- that rarely exists and, where it does, is illegal today.
So it would be a mistake to compare today's so-called "visible minorities" to yesterday's "lighter skinned" groups and conclude that, well, back then they had it easy. In many cases, the opposite is true.
Second, I mean, really? Japanese-Canadians outearn Anglo-Canadians and most other "white" ethnic groups. Portugese-Canadians underearn a whle bunch of "visible" ethnic groups. It is very hard to believe that an obsession with race should replace the more careful consideration of social and structural barriers.
theman23 said:
I don't know about the situation with Eastern European Jews since most of them arrived before my time, but many of the East Asians that arrived in this country in the late 80s and 90s, particularily those from Hong Kong, were fairly affluent even before they arrived in Canada.
In all cases, I think it is true that, while there are many other factors, urban design can certainly account for a lot. To respond more directly to the people talking about East European Jews ... quite a lot have actually immigrated in pretty recent years, and in some of the neighbourhoods with pretty piss-poor planning and in which they cluster -- Bathurst from Finch to, say, Steeles -- you do indeed have some criminality, as a couple of high-profile cases have made famous.
As for the ones who arrived before your time, the great majority arrived dirt-poor -- Mirvish's story is typical -- and, despite the whole "none is too many" business, enough refugees made it in to account for a quite significant percentage of the overall Jewish immigrant population at that time.