[verelo]

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?

[untog]

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.

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.

[verelo]

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"