Whites will be a distinct visible minority in Metro Vancouver in less than two decades, according to a new report.

After being an overwhelming majority in Metro Vancouver up until the 1980s, whites will make up only two out of five residents by the year 2031, according to projections done for Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

University of British Columbia geographer Daniel Hiebert also predicts that ethnic groups in Metro will increasingly concentrate in neighbourhood enclaves, creating a degree of racial segregation paralleled only by blacks and whites in major U.S. cities

The rate of immigration into Metro Vancouver will continue to be so rapid that, by 2031, only one out of four residents of the region will have grandparents who lived in Canada, the veteran social geographer writes in his research paper titled, A New Residential Order?

“There is no European city with anything like this demographic structure, nor will there be in 2031,” writes Hiebert, who, as co-director of research and policy forum Metropolis B.C., has travelled the world studying immigration patterns.

Hiebert’s analysis of census data forecasts the largest ethnic group in Metro Vancouver will be Chinese, followed by South Asians, Filipinos, Koreans and West Asians (such as Iranians).

Without declaring whether these demographic trends will be negative or positive for Metro, Hiebert nevertheless says the “scale of ethnographic change over (the next) period will be larger and more rapid than anything we have seen previously.”

The only major city that will match Metro Vancouver in dramatic growth of ethnic populations will be Toronto, says Hiebert’s report, which can be found on the immigration department’s website.(http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/research/residential.asp)

“Toronto and Vancouver are likely to have a social geography that is entirely new to Canada.”

Calling it a “grand story” of demographic change, Hiebert predicts that Metro Vancouver’s so-called ethnic population will grow seven times faster than the combined white and aboriginal population.

Based on immigration and birthrates, Hiebert’s report predicts that by 2031 the number of visible minorities (or non-whites) in Metro Vancouver will rise by 1.150 million people; to 59 per cent of the population compared to 41 per cent in 2006.

The white population, meanwhile, will grow by only 150,000.

According to Hiebert’s model, Metro Toronto’s visible minority population will mushroom by 3.3 million, with whites accounting for just 37 per cent of its residents by 2031.

The largest religion in Metro Vancouver in less than two decades will remain Christian, since many Asian immigrants either arrive as Christians or convert after they’re here.

The next largest religious group, according to Hiebert, will be Sikhs, followed by Muslims and Buddhists. Metro will continue to have a large proportion of people who will say they have “no religion,” in part because Chinese immigrants tend to fall into that category.

Hiebert arrived at his ethnic and religious forecasts by using algorithms to extrapolate ethnographic trends of the recent decades up to 2031.