[refurb]

"...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.

[otoburb]

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...

[doublerebel]

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...

[sedachv]

> 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.

[nekojima]

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...?

[anovikov]

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.

[ido]

    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.

[anovikov]

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.

[brightsize]

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.

[ido]

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.

[anovikov]

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.

[ido]

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).

[anovikov]

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.

[ido]

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.

[IsaacL]

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).

[justinhj]

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.