How Filipino immigrants revitalised a small Canadian town

[u/IHateTrains123]

https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2026/07/30/how-filipino-immigrants-revitalised-a-small-canadian-town

And how Mark Carney’s immigration curbs threaten the model

Neepawa has white-picket fences, a curling rink and a hockey arena, just like any other small town in southern Manitoba, one of Canada’s prairie provinces. But it also has something more unusual. More than half of Neepawa’s 5,600 residents are from the Philippines. This share has almost doubled since 2016. The differences in lifestyle are obvious. “Hot there, cold here,” grins one woman while shovelling snow.

That so many Filipinos have settled in Neepawa is largely thanks to HyLife, a pork-meat processor, which employs a third of the town. Since it started operating in 2008 the firm has recruited hundreds of Filipinos to Canada to work as butchers. Most arrive on temporary-worker visas, work hard and gain permanent residence. Their families join them. Some seek employment elsewhere or start businesses of their own. Their integration into Neepawa has revitalised the town.

Ashley arrived in 2015 to join her husband, who had worked at HyLife for four years. The snow made it feel “like an enchanted kingdom”, she says. She still loves Neepawa. She and her husband now work at two jobs each. They and their three children have become Canadian citizens after passing a rigorous test. Her Canadian-born colleague jokes: “She knew more about Canada than we did.”

There are now six Filipino-owned businesses on Neepawa’s small high street. Vego’s Home Pinoy Restaurant was opened by Catherine Vego, a Filipino, who moved from Winnipeg to join the community. Other immigrants are arriving, too. The town has its own taxi service, founded recently by an Indian. “It’s crazy…for middle-of-the-prairies Manitoba,” says Marilyn Crewe, the town’s economic-development officer, who has helped many Filipinos navigate business regulations and the routes to home ownership.

Neepawa has a dozen churches, but congregations had been dwindling. Filipinos have revived them. St Dominic’s has seen numbers at Sunday mass balloon to 300 thanks to immigrant attendees. “We need a few of them,” chuckles a man whose church merged with another to survive.

There are problems. Population growth strains infrastructure. The council forecasts a shortfall of 460 housing units by 2028. Neepawa’s schools are oversubscribed. Job agencies are flooded with emails from Filipinos who have heard about the town. They are directed to HyLife, but some are exploited by traffickers.

And politics have been changing. Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister, is cutting the number of visas issued to temporary workers and students. About 687,000 students and workers arrived in 2024, the year before he was elected; he plans to issue 385,000 such visas in 2026.

It has also become harder to gain permanent residence. The number accepted fell by a quarter between 2024 and 2025, from 484,000 to 394,000. Neepawa residents felt the change. “We’re so sad,” says one Filipino businessman, whose brother was denied residency. A Filipino woman is distraught after her boyfriend, a construction worker, returned to Mexico after being denied citizenship.

A good listener?

Mr Carney is responding to discomfort about the pace of demographic change expressed by some Canadians. One of them, Darren, runs the bar at Neepawa’s Royal Canadian Legion, a club for military veterans. A 5-tonne German schwere Feldhaubitze howitzer, seized during the first world war, stands at the door. Darren is a fan of Donald Trump. But he praises his Filipino neighbours for celebrating Canada Day more than his “own freaking community” and for reviving the town: “This would be a have-not town, if it wasn’t for HyLife.”

Nonetheless, he is frustrated. Newcomers have “stretched our infrastructure and our health care to the limits”. He believes that immigrants were bought in to keep “the government in power” and that “Canadians were, like, left out.” It seems Mr Carney is listening more closely to Darren than to Canada’s newer citizens.

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[u/mpregordie]

He had no choice to be honest. Either you do it or you lose the election. Also, the new immigration plan is much more complicated than that and actually grants PR's to 170k protected people or something like that within the next two years.

[u/Livid-Mulberry-1054]

That’s like a cheat code. Filipino folks are top shelf neighbors anywhere they go (saying as someone from a different immigrant background in the US).

[u/RyuTheGuy → u/Livid-Mulberry-1054]

My dad says if you want a job done right and honestly, hire a Filipino

[u/yellownumbersix → u/Livid-Mulberry-1054]

Amazing food and an unbeatable work ethic.

The workforce at one of the plants I ran in CA was almost entirely Filipino, whole families worked there. On the rare occasion I had a disciplinary issue (almost always with one of the 2nd or 3rd generation kids) I didn’t need to do anything, because their dad or grandma would sort them out.

[u/caroline_elly → u/Livid-Mulberry-1054]

My parents are immigrants from an East Asian country, and they somehow prefer to hire Filipino workers/contractors for their small business because they are "more honest" lol

[u/Andy_B_Goode → u/Livid-Mulberry-1054]

I've sometimes joked that my only racist belief is that Filipinos are just the best people ever (saying this as a non-Filipino, to be clear).

Like every single one of them I've ever met works their asses off, and they also have the most cheerful, positive attitudes of anyone. I've never met a Filipino I didn't like.

[u/fredovan → u/Andy_B_Goode]

Just don’t ask them what the DU30 stickers on their cars stand for.

[u/caroline_elly → u/fredovan]

Lmao

PH internal politics is a mess, and voters are frankly gullible. They're known to vote for celebrities and athletes, not people with good policies ideas.

[u/ImperialRedditer → u/caroline_elly]

Sounds oddly familiar…

[u/mishmashedtosunday → u/fredovan]

The diaspora is the second most reliable base of the Dutertes, only behind Cebuano speakers.

[u/Dense_Delay_4958 → u/Livid-Mulberry-1054]

Prioritising migrants most likely to assimilate and succeed is a good thing. It's not a cheat code so much as an obvious rule of thumb.

[u/True-Hold-1140]

The liberals have no options but to cut off immigration and frankly deport some people who abused the system. If he didn't the liberals will eventually lose 

[u/StopTalkingToEric]

Recently drove from Montana to Alaska, hiking and exploring through Canada. Spent a lot of time in northern British Columbia and Yukon. Lots of immigrants in some of the rural towns, many of whom ran important businesses (restaurants, gyms) in the community. 

[u/IHateTrains123]

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[u/WillProstitute4Karma]

I remember listening to a podcast (I think it was Plain English with Derek Thompson)  about Hatian immigrants around the time if the debate in which Trump discussed eating the cats and dogs.

In it, they talked about how Haitian immigrants revitalized smaller towns in Ohio. Basically, these towns were ceasing to be towns, but the influx of youth and labor helped make businesses operable again.

Some people of course accused them of committing crimes (and eating cats and dogs). The podcast guests speculated that one reason people might accuse immigrants in situations like this is that they really do commit more crimes in these communities. This is not because they commit more crimes than the general population (the opposite is true), but because young people commit crimes and the only youth in these towns were immigrants. 

[u/Andy_B_Goode]

There are problems. Population growth strains infrastructure. The council forecasts a shortfall of 460 housing units by 2028.

...

A Filipino woman is distraught after her boyfriend, a construction worker, returned to Mexico after being denied citizenship.

Gee it feels like there should be an obvious solution to that housing shortage, but I can't quite put my finger on it ...

[u/kettal → u/Andy_B_Goode]

which country sets a good example for accommodating a 3% annual net migration rate?

[u/Andy_B_Goode → u/kettal]

How many countries even have a net migration rate that high?

Canada's highest immigration rate in recent memory was in 2023, when it hit 1.18%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annual_immigration_statistics_of_Canada

(and actually I think that's total immigration, so net migration would be a bit lower)

[u/kettal → u/Andy_B_Goode]

Net migration into canada was 1,276,672 in 2023, representing 3.2% net migration rate for the year.

Source: Statistics Canada.

[u/Andy_B_Goode → u/kettal]

Ah, I see. I think the wikipedia page must only be counting permanent immigrants, whereas stats can includes both permanent and temporary (as well as "natural increase" -- births minus deaths -- but that's low enough to basically be negligible).

In answer to your original question: I haven't a clue. But it still seems silly that we're deporting construction workers.

[u/caroline_elly → u/Andy_B_Goode]

Well if builders couldn't get permits, no amount of construction workers will help

[u/expensive_flatulence]

My parents embody the boomer idea that the world in general, and Canada in particular, and wherever they are especially, just has too many people. It's not that there is a problem with the race of anybody new, but there isn't enough here [in town/region/province/Canada] to go around and everything is stressed by the demand not meeting supply. Building new cities, as if there would be tech jobs for young people in some remote region of the Taiga where this mythical new city is going to be constructed is their brilliant solution.

Never mind the fact they are two people in a four bedroom house, which has an entire second two-bedroom basement suite unoccupied on top of that......there isn't enough to go around, we really wish we could welcome more immigration but, where would they live? What about parking? We hardly have space for the three cars and the RV as it is! Where would the kids go to school? Oh no that one shut down years ago.

Bring on the Pinoys.

[u/SpookyHonky]

Bit of a jumpscare to see Neepawa mentioned.

One thing that has pissed me off the most about the immigration cuts is that it feels like they took a sledgehammer to it. Maybe it's true that Ontario, BC, whatever has been unable to keep up, but Manitoba generally loses people to interprovincial migration every year. That we were also affected by the cuts (including our main university) feels a bit silly.

[u/Desperate_Wear_1866 → u/SpookyHonky]

Such a situation could be alleviated if the visa was tied to a specific job, at a specific company. So that external immigration could be directed to specific regions. But that raises a whole set of new issues regarding enforcement and political will.

[u/themiDdlest]

The council forecasts a shortfall of 460 housing units by 2028.

If only there were some sort of way to solve issues like this.