How to Get a Start-up Visa and Move to Canada for Permanent Residence
For those who want to move to Canada on Start-up Visa and successfully develop a start-up project, but still have doubts, let’s look at the frequently asked questions and answers about business immigration to Canada:
- Huge business development opportunities in the second largest country in the world;
- An incredibly short time for consideration of an application for immigration in order to obtain permanent residence in Canada – up to 6 months
- Permanent residence in Canada for 5 business owners with their families, and after that, Canadian citizenship
- Lack of requirements for investing equity
- An opportunity to start a business in Canada before becoming a resident
There are 4 basic requirements:
- You need to achieve support from one of the designated organizations. It can be a group of angel investors, a venture capital fund, or a business incubator
- You must meet the ownership requirements
- You must gain at least 5th level in the Canadian Language Benchmark for English or French
- You must have the possibility to pay for the cost of living in Canada before obtaining the first income
When all the requirements mentioned are met, IRCC will evaluate your application on the basis of the list of criteria including health, security, and criminality. Moreover, Canadian Migration Service can request verification of the fact that you are supported by the investment institution.
Sure. However in this case you should convince the designated financial institution to send you a letter of support. In order to accomplish the first task you should present your business idea, pointing at its topicality and prospects of its application in Canada.
There is also one condition that has to be taken into consideration – groups of angel investors, as well as venture capital funds, should invest certain amount of money, while business incubators can support your business idea another way.
To fulfill the first necessary condition, you must, first of all, contact the organization from which you want to get support, since the process of submitting an idea for each investment institution is different. If the organization decides to support you, you will receive a certificate of cooperation and a Letter of Support.
At any time you have the right to use the help of professional consultants, lawyers and specialists in the field of migration issues, who will explain you all the details of the program and save your time and energy, but you can also do it without anyone’s help.
- For a venture capital fund, the required investment is estimated at $ 200,000 Canadian dollars.
- For a group of business angels, the required investment is estimated at $ 75,000 Canadian dollars.
- Concluding cooperation with a business incubator, you do not have to confirm the received investment, but you should be included in the business incubator program.
If you want to get support from a business incubator, you need to be a part of the business incubator program. Programs, in turn, have different entry conditions, proposals and duration of cooperation. It is quite difficult to get into such a program, since the number of available places is extremely limited. To confirm support from the venture capital fund and business angel group, you need to get a certain amount of investment from them.
If the designated organization decides to support you, it will send you a Letter of Support, as well as a certificate of cooperation, which must be included in the application. When taking a on the application submitted, the Canadian Immigration Ministry will take into account both the Letter of Support and the cooperation certificate.
This is the responsibility of the Ministry of Immigration Canada. When considering your application, everything will be taken into account: the prospects of your business idea evaluated by the financial institution, the IRCC eligibility criteria, and the ministry will also ask the association of the relevant designated financial institutions for an independent expert evaluation in order to confirm the absence of your fraud.
This is not necessary. All you need is to get support from Canadian investors. It is this fact that makes the Start-up Visa Program unique in comparison with other business immigration programs in Canada.
After obtaining permanent residence, bankruptcy will not affect your permanent resident status in any way. This program envisages the possibility of bankruptcy and distributes the risk between the private and public sectors.
Groups of business angels usually use their own capital, while funds have a common investment capital, which they invest in various companies. The former more often invest in developing companies, while the latter provide investment services to more “mature” enterprises.
This is called syndication. In this case, you need to specify all financial institutions that support you. The Ministry of Canada will receive one letter of support and one certificate of cooperation.
In the end each application will either be approved or denied. In the first and second case you will receive a letter from the Ministry of Immigration of Canada.
No. Thanks to a unique system in which all inspections are carried out before making a decision, you can get the status of a resident without any additional conditions.