Salvadoran immigration to Canada is a fairly recent phenomenon. Until the 1980s, Salvadoran immigration to Canada was small to nonexistent. It wasn't until the civil war that sizable numbers of Salvadorans started to come to the country. Between 1982 and 1987, 11,251 Salvadorans entered Canada under a special program that help displaced Salvadorans as well as Guatemalans suffering from the war. Like their Australian counterparts, some of these were political asylum seekers and others were refugees looking for a place to stay. Unlike their American counterparts, Salvadorans seeking refuge in Canada were more likely to have their asylum applications approved than those in the United States, as a result of different Canadian and American policy to the situation in El Salvador. In 2002, immigrants from El Salvador came to Brandon, Manitoba, to work for a food processing company.