Canada designs new visa for immigrant entrepreneurs | Hacker News Reader

Canada designs new visa for immigrant entrepreneurs

theglobeandmail.com

110 pointsimack42 comments

"...and intends to initiate a visa that would be issued to people identified by venture capital funds as candidates to create startup firms in Canada."

Anyone else find this to be an odd way to go about it?

VC firms have distinctly different goals when funding companies than the people actually running the company.

I guess it raises some questions for me:

(1) Is there a floor to how much funding is required? For lack of a better term, does the start-up have to have X numbers of years of runway to qualify? (2) What happens to the entrepreneur if the VC firms decides to turf them? Do they get to stay or are they required to leave the country? (3) Does the entire start-up team get visas? The article mentions how the old e-ship visa has been put on hold. So if a founder gets VC funding, starts the company, but wants to bring in more foreign workers, can they?

Don't get me wrong, I think this is a great idea and it is exactly what the US should be doing as well. There are just a lot of unanswered questions for me and I wonder how well it will work in practice.

Last I looked a few months ago, the minimum investment was $750K CAD. Now it is $800K, with a $1.6MM CAD net worth. Citzenship and Immigration Canada "will return your C$800,000 investment, without interest, about five years and two months after payment." [1] I think it is important to note that their foreign-invested business programs have become backlogged in processing, and have been holding onto the life savings of many Chinese citizens since 2007. [2]

The article hints that small teams will be accepted, but also says "Canada seeks ... immigrants who will contribute to Canada’s job growth", so the number of Canadian employees will be the deciding factor along with the amount generated for the economy.

From my experience with US friends who have Canadian work visas, Canada is strict and will not allow foreigners to remain long without an employee sponsor. It's also difficult to acquire citizenship without several years of residence. I would guess that hiring foreigners will be accepted as long as the investment amount is high, but the likelihood that they will become permanent residents is very low.

[1] http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/business/investors/in...

[2] http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/08/12/chinese-citizens-dem...

Here are the BC requirements, bit different from Federal government.

$400,000 investment and at least a 33.3% stake in the company. Plus a net worth requirement of $800,000.

http://www.welcomebc.ca/wbc/immigration/come/work/about/busi...?

> It's also difficult to acquire citizenship without several years of residence.

You need a spend a certain amount of time living in Canada as a permanent resident (3 years, non-contiguous, although this figure may be out of date) to be eligible for citizenship, but if you have permanent residency you have almost the same rights as a citizen. It's getting the permanent resident status that's hard. There is no requirement to live in Canada under another visa to obtain permanent residency - you can apply for and obtain permanent residency status from your home country before arriving in Canada. That's how the majority of non-family sponsored people immigrate to Canada.

For this crowd it may be an odd way of going about identifying entrepreneurs to give visas to. However, this is the (Canadian) government, and like most governments they typically wouldn't have the in-house expertise to identify this talent themselves. So they need to rely on high-status signals; the next best thing they can see are early-stage VC firms who are active in the space.

(1) Given the abysmal failure of the previous 'entrepreneur' visa category, I believe that they would probably go with at least a 12mo runway, although the VC firms and startup team would probably have to justify (via paper projection - ha!) a reasonable 2yr runway.

(2) The example in the article provided was the case of Summify, which was acquired by Twitter[1]. That seems to be the spark (among others) to bring more attention to the issue of a lack of strong Canadian anchor companies[2]. Again, using the previous 'entrepreneur' visa category which supposedly was being used as a loophole, the government is trying to respond by focusing on previous examples and a growing chorus of media and startup community attention around keeping and growing Canadian startup talent.

(3) Assuming that an "entire" startup team might consist of 2-5 people (I wish I had a statistic to back this up somehow other than anecdotal reading), that's not a far stretch. If the founder(s) want to hire foreign workers, then that may be more difficult because Canada would sure want to encourage them to try attracting and keeping Canadian technical talent first.

[1]http://startupvisa.ca/summify-inspiration-by-startup-visa-ca...

[2]http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/ca...

This is similar to Canada's provincial nominee program. Skilled workers, usually already working in Canada under a temporary visa, are put forward by companies for permanent residence and cut the line.

I guess the whole point for the government is to make more jobs for locals. So i doubt they will easily allow bringing more people than the founders, and of course floor of funding will be required. Don't forget the government has its own interests, in addition to founders and VCs.

Government should be very careful to not create a loophole for de facto illegal immigration, so limiting funding to some set of established VCs is natural (or people will start providing fictional funding to themselves on paper, never spending it, their 'startups' will go nowhere, and they will bring in whole villages of 'early employees' to work on gas stations and clean floors). You can't imagine how tricky the desperate people who want to escape their unfortunate countries are, and they have a lot of time to figure out the paperwork, and the government knows it, so expect a lot of red tape, and expect limitations that will seem stupid.

Also most likely, after N years (2..4) the visa will automatically expire and they will have to apply under the already existing entrepreneural category, meaning startup will have to take off by then, having certain turnover and N+ full time jobs in existence, or leave.

To me, this is natural and positive. Good countries are like good clubs, they are good only as long as they are hard to get into. Lift the barriers and there will be no place in the world you'd wish to go on a vacation.

Own experience: i have immigrated to several countries, and i can tell a strong positive link between difficulty of getting through paperwork and quality of living.

    To me, this is natural and positive. 
    Good countries are like good clubs, 
    they are good only as long as they 
    are hard to get into. Lift the barriers 
    and there will be no place in the world 
    you'd wish to go on a vacation.

Why is that? I find a lot of anti-immigration feelings stem from the incorrect belief that jobs are like a natural resource that can run out. I say, as long as someone's not a criminal or has some unfortunate lethal transmittable disease let everyone that wants to immigrate do so.

Moving across the world to a different country, leaving everyone and everything you know to start in a foreign culture and language is a pain in the butt. The people who are so driven and motivated they're willing to endure that in order to find work are the kind of people you'd want in your country.

It's not about jobs (to me), just about quality of life, which means educational and cultural level of people around (plus weather, which is harder to fix) - these 2 things are enough to fix everything else around with time.

I'd like to meet people who don't qualify for the now-present Canada's immigration barriers (quite mild point-based one, which essentially means having decent English, higher education, and some work experience), as little as possible.

Sure startup founders (even if their startups - real ones - will fail) are a very positive addition to any society. But people who could use loopholes in law to get in pretending to be founders are mostly not.

You don't have to be their friends, it is beneficial to the receiving country to have hard working people willing to go to great lengths to improve their lot in life.

Their immigration barriers are far more than English, education, and "some work experience". There'd be no need for this startup visa if that was the case. I was rejected by CIC on a PR application, simply (according to them) for being in their eyes "not managerial enough". They were at the time accepting only "IT managers" not developers, but my time managing the IT systems at several startups concurrently with dev/dev-management duties did not qualify me. Their point system and their list of acceptable skillsets is highly restrictive and the I strongly suspect that the government bureaucrats in charge of vetting PR applications are incapable of making nuanced decisions about the history and capabilities of applicants.

Try thinking of it that way: there are many Russians in the Silicon Valley, they are smart people, a significant part of its success story, definitely make a great positive contribution to the ecosystem.

Now imagine that U.S. allowed any Russian in. Getting my idea now?

So immigration is a good (maybe even necessary) thing for a nation to be successful. But just careful, selective immigration. In every country, by definition, average people are born on average. You don't want them, every country already has enough of it's own home-born mediocrity.

I'm not American myself but I'd have no problem letting every Russian who doesn't have a criminal record (and are able bodied etc..) immigrate to my country[1][2].

The fact that they're willing to pack up and move to a foreign country half way across the globe for the chance of finding work means they are already above average in their ambition & work-ethic.

[1] ideally every country would implement freedom of immigration like that, so they don't all end up in 1 place.

[2] incidentally I'm Israeli, and Israel has tons of immigrants from the former Soviet Union (over a million out of a total population of 7 million).

Why don't you think they will direct most of their talent in squeezing as much public funds as possible, working inofficially in criminal or semi-criminal activities. That's what people in Russia do without immigrating anywhere, and those able to immigrate will be probably more talented in this regard.

Do they do this because Russians are somehow genetically inclined to dishonesty? Or is it because the opportunities for honest work with a decent pay in Russia are a lot worse than in the west?

I postulate that even if the 1st generation immigrants might bring some cultural baggage with them, their children will mostly share the culture of their host country (modulo ethic cookery & speaking an extra language).

BTW we don't have to theorize anything, as the reason that there are so many Russians in Israel is that it was fairly easy for them to come here if they could prove they had some Jewish heritage (for many of which a very faint one, like one grandparent being a non-practicing Jew) & we don't see this doomsday scenario you predicted.

Israel does not have choice: it is a Jewish country and it has to invite Jews, not someone else. There are not so many Jews in the world to filter them (and the better kinds of them are probably well-off enough in their current countries to repatriate).

America has choice on the other hand: lots of people want to get there, and you can't take all of them even if yo wish. Why don't filter? That is even more true about Canada.

That's not the point we were discussing, you were saying that just allowing anyone ("any Russian" for our example) to come will be a negative thing because it will bring a lot of people who would just leech off of the social welfare system.

My rebuttal is that this is very similar to what happened in Israel, a large and fairly random ("have some degree of Jewish decent") group of people were allowed to immigrate with very little hassle & it ended up being positive for all involved (except maybe the country they left).

The population of a country already much more densely populated than the US grew by 65% in 20 years[1], so this is not a case of it only working because not many people wanted to immigrate.

To summarize: my opinion is not that there should be 0 filtering, but that there should be less filtering than there is today, and that increasing the amount people coming over would benefit countries like the US and Canada.

[1] http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&#...

Canada is already a country of immigrants. If they lower entry barriers, won't next generation of Canadians be of less quality than the current one? Of course there will be more of them, but do they NEED more people, especially at the expense of quality? Maybe about the current size is right for them - they are in no immediate threat of say, territorial losses to some foreign power, or any other threat arising from low population (for Israel situation is the opposite: It needs as many Jews and as few non-jews as possible, due to being rounded with enemies, so it's OK if these are any Jews you can find, and even allow some flexibility about who is a Jew).

Canada came to where it is now (a nice place, with places like Toronto or Montreal near top of world's liveability index) exactly due to that: they have been very picky about people who they let in.

Somehow people fight for lowering immigration barriers thinking they are a discrimination of some sort and yet nobody thinks that say, entry exams to college are a discrimination. But these are essentially same thing: allow everyone into a good college and in a few years you'll get a shitty college (because both good professors will leave to avoid teaching idiots, and good students will not enroll for same reason).

I read an interesting report (I think it was from McKinsey) about different tech clusters around the world, and which had succeeded or failed. One major theme (as the report was mainly aimed at policy makers) was government support; was it helpful or harmful?

One finding was that when it came to financial support for startups, government acting alone (ie allowing some random beauracrats to decide which startups to give grants to) was counter-productive. But working with VC firms (ie governments investing in VC firms or some kind of matched investment scheme) generally saw good results. (Passion Capital in the UK and various initiatives in Israel were both given as examples IIRC).

From what I can tell, this wouldn't help me one bit. I'm an American who would love the opportunity to found a startup in Canada. That means being there from conception to MVP. But it sounds like this plan will only allow a pretty advanced company, one that has gained the interest of VCs, to move there. If a company was founded elsewhere and was that far along, why would the team move it to Canada? Furthermore, what of startups that don't require VC money, is it really in Canada's best interest to put out the "Not Welcome" mat for them? I think the country needs to devise a program that lets the next non-resident Jobs/Woz or Gates/Allen to set up shop in their Canadian garage and get to work without any of this VC-related nonsense here.

"If a company was founded elsewhere and was that far along, why would the team move it to Canada? "

Good question. But I'd also ask why, as an American, would you love to found a startup in Canada? What advantage over starting it in the US?

Lower cost of talent (than large tech ecosystems in US), rebates on R&D talent, delinking of health care and employment, etc.

There are also advantages to living in the US of course, where this Canadian is currently working.

Probably none. But perhaps as a foreigner finding it difficult to relocate to the US you may find Canada a possible second choice, whereas right now it's just not even a possibility.

>> An initial source of candidates could be frustrated foreigners in the high-tech sector in the United States who have not been able to land resident status there.

I assume it would be the obvious one: getting to live in Canada :)

Correct. I think it's a wonderful country in a great many ways and it would be a pleasure to live there. I was recently in Toronto and was surprised to find that it has a solid startup scene. I'd never heard that about the city, I'd just assumed it was full of back-office banking jobs for techies like me. I met some potential partners there and if/when something clicks, I'll still enjoy zero rights to be colocated with a Toronto-based team. There's the possibility of getting TN status I suppose but that's intended for employees, not founders.

Agreed. I wholeheartedly agree with their fundamental idea, but going the VC route doesn't seem like a good way to do it. By the time you've built up all the connections and steam you need to develop a budding company that a VC would be interested in investing in, your roots are going to be too strong wherever you currently are to be able to move to Canada. I'll be surprised if they get anything more than a handful of companies to relocate.

Also, any time you involve money people, you set the stage for things to get crooked and shady. I can already hear the narrator from some "Inside Job" type documentary on corruption in Canada.

"However, the Canadians didn't account for one major loophole. In 2012, they passed a law allowing startups with venture capital to emigrate into the country, but what they didn't consider was: ___________"

I guess it depends on how much capital is required to qualify, but perhaps if startup teams were allowed to pitch at accelerators (plane tickets, no visas) and receive a funding option, then this would be a way in for them to start gathering later-stage investment interest. I'm not sure if "VC" referred to in the article means "any accelerator/incubator/super-angel program" or "proper VC firms".

For those startups that don't require VC money, I just think that the government has no clue how to deal with that without it being exploited like the last visa, so they figured they'd throw something out there that they could pull off with their majority government.

As a Canadian now living in Silicon Valley I think this is a perilous idea.

The main problem is that Canada doesn't have near enough active VC investors.

Hardly anywhere does, even Silicon Valley.

Having them be the sole gatekeepers will fall far short of what's possible.

The government is grasping for straws. It seems they were pretty desperate to close the previous e-visa loophole that was being clearly exploited and come up with a new idea.

Given it's only 2750 visas/yr, I like to think this is the Canadian government's version of an MVP that VCs and Canadian startup communities have lobbied hard for.

Maybe they'll find ways to expand or relax the qualifying restrictions in the future.

>The main problem is that Canada doesn't have near enough active VC investors.

A trend that is certainly changing. Vancouver, for instance, has a growing and vibrant VC community, from which this very bill was initiated.

As an immigrant and entrepreneur in Canada, I'm less than impressed by this new visa class.

This visa means you can work for your own company, in Canada, provided it has funding from a VC. Lets reword that a bit and it sounds like "You can work for a specific company, in Canada, provided you have an offer letter"

Honestly if Canada wants to do something truly innovative, they should look at the track record of applicants rather than simply saying "get a VC to sponsor you". Things like: have they received funding previously, do they have relevant experience, have they got any revenue or "traction" on their current idea, how have they validated their current idea and whats the chance of it getting funding...are all great places to start.

The bottom line: there are plenty of people without VC funding who Canada should welcome, and this visa offers no assistance to. Sadly if Canada doesnt let them in, someone else will, and with VCs in the US getting more comfortable with non North American investments, maybe this doesnt change anything?

But... isn't that exactly what a VC would do? While I absolutely do understand the frustration with VCs being the gatekeepers for this, it's much more preferable to the government holding the keys. They would be useless at assessing "idea traction" for example, and I'm glad they know enough to not try.

As someone in the US on an H1B visa who left Canada because of visa restrictions, this does look very interesting- even if it's just a starting point. I just got back from a weekend in Vancouver- I'd forgotten how much I love that city.

Yeah i see your point. I just mean, if Canada wants to attract the best people, the best way for this to happen would be for them to create a visa thats open and slightly more "risky" (its the nature of the game)

I have a B1/B2 visa as well, and in general ive never had any real visa issues but I just feel that with all the options available to people today, you need to do more than say "if the VC says yes, so do we"

As a recent Waterloo grad, 95% of my friends have moved to US (California, Seattle, NY); the problem isn't trying to attract more talent, rather building infrastructure to retain it. Honestly, I love living in Canada, but there are fewer high paying jobs and its much more difficult to get funding for startups.

True, most successful Canadian startups get bought out by American investors anyway and moved to the States.

A better summary of the article would be "Canada planning to make it harder for entrepreneurs to immigrate".

Otherwise one could think that progress is being made. Whereas it looks like Canada doesn't even want entrepreneurs; instead it wants "hot" companies to move to Canada (see VC requirement and just 2750 visas/year).

I had an hour-long chat with a guy from Canada's Federal Economic Development Agency who I met at a startup event and still keep in touch with. I suggested to him that they should copy the Startup Chile program to get entrepreneurs into Canada and create some buzz. He politely insisted that Canada's current programs are innovative and adequate. I know this is just one anecdotal data point, but it fits the cliche of the don't-rock-the-boat/cover-your-ass government employee and I wasn't too surprised. I wonder how Chile was able to overcome government inertia and get their program off the ground?

By "current programs" did he mean existing entrepreneur program that was put on hold, or proposed entrepreneur program that is yet to be implemented?

Boy, would I love it if Japan would do something like this!

My boss was involved in preparing the draft proposal that this bill is based on. He has over a decade of experience on both sides of the VC/start up fence. His experience bringing the team that created Summify to Canada from Romania was a catalyst for this bill. Like all things, it is not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction.

Agreed. As someone who was pushed out of Canada because of visa restrictions back in 2008 (and has been living in NYC since), I'm glad to finally see some steps being made here. By coincidence I just got back from a weekend back in Vancouver and had forgotten how much I miss the place- but as someone more tech-oriented, I'm still working out how this could play to my advantage.

Reality Check

Canada's backlog of (immigration) Visas is huge, and they are apparently not keeping up with it

Check the website and see the average delays in processing.

Apparently Canada has almost everything that is needed to have great startups, except the culture (and maybe the drive).

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