What is Business Immigration to Canada

Jonathan’s story

Jonathan was 42 years old, had a bachelor’s degree in Electromechanics from an Israeli university and had been a photography studio business owner for four years before submitting his application for permanent residence represented by our company’s licensed immigration consultants (RCIC). Jonathan took his IELTS exam and scored 6.5 in each band. He had no relatives in Canada and did not know any French language. As such, Jonathan scored 15 points for education; 30 points for relevant experience; 10 for age. At this stage, he already had scored the sufficient number of points thus his English test results were not that important. Jonathan was single, never worked or studied in Canada and had no relatives here as already mentioned above.

We assisted Jonathan with all the relevant paperwork to prove his education credentials, self-employed work experience, confirmation that he met all the requirements of the definition of a self-employed artist as per the immigration regulations and sent in his application to Immigration, Refugees, Citizenship Canada.

Back then, the average processing time for the application was 36 months as per the Immigration, Refugees, Citizenship Canada website. Jonathan was very upset about it. He sought another consultation with one of our RCIC’s to look for a solution to relocate to Canada faster to be able to work as a photographer here.
Jonathan had an online consultation with one of our RCICs and after a thorough discussion, we recommended an owner-operator LMIA based work permit for him. For more information on LMIA and LMIA owner-operator, you can refer to this article.

We assisted Jonathan with company registration, business plan, studio location wire transfer and CRA and bank accounts set up. Once all was in place, we filed his company’s application for an LMIA. This application was approved after a series of interviews and emails with Service Canada and Jonathan arrived at the Toronto Lester B Pearson Airport and obtained his work permit for a position of a director of a photo studio.

It is important to note that the fact Jonathan had applied for permanent residence as a self-employed person had nothing to do with his work permit application. It is a part of the dual intent clause in the immigration regulations which allows a foreign national to intent to become a permanent resident but still be admitted into Canada for a temporary residence (e.g. studies, work, business, visit)

Moreover, Jonathan story brings us to a very interesting option to become more competitive for Canadian immigration being a candidate more integrated into the Canadian labour market. We’ll discuss these options in more details below after we’re done with other business immigration options.

Here’s the story of Ronen.

Ronen is also an Israeli entrepreneur. Israel is well-known for its start-up companies and regularly referred to as a “start-up nation”. There is even a book called Start-Up Nation, written by Dan Senor and Saul Singer. So, Ronen was an IT engineer and a team lead at one of the Israeli hi-tech companies. In the same time, he was working on his own project – he wanted to create a mobile app that would allow users to instantly make international wire transfers to bank accounts overseas using their credit cards or bank accounts with low commissions and without a need to actually go to their bank’s branches. This might sound trivial but back then it was not that easy. Some banks still require their clients to physically come to their branches to make such wire transfers.

One day Ronen decided that he wanted to move to Canada. He read about the Start-up visa program and was confident that his idea would be so attractive to Canadian designated organizations (a list of which is here) but unfortunately, it was not so. Ronen had a couple of interviews, but his applications were ignored.

Ronen was disappointed but not hopeless. He was confident that managing his business in Canada would be the right step. He also wanted to become a permanent resident of Canada. He just didn’t know how to make it happen. Luckily, he was referred to us by one of his former colleagues. Ronen had a consultation with one of our RCICs and we offered him a different approach. We assisted Ronen to incorporate his Canadian company, set up all the relevant accounts, assisted him with wire transfers to have some initial working capital in his business, his business plan and financial calculations for his business. We gave Ronen some general business guidance and prepared his application for a work permit in Canada under the International Mobility Program, Canadian Interests, Entrepreneurs category.

International Mobility Program is designed for LMIA exempt work permits for qualifying foreign nationals who wish to work temporarily in Canada.
Canadian interest is a category that allows certain candidates, in certain circumstances, to obtain Canadian work permits. Entrepreneur is a category for people who manage or intend to manage a business in Canada which might be beneficial to Canada.

We filed Ronen’s applications on behalf of his Canadian company and on behalf of himself and in a very short time, Ronen was already working – managing his own company in Toronto, Ontario.

After one year of successful business operations, Ronen returned to us for further guidance on how to become a permanent resident in Canada. We then presented the Start-up visa program. At this stage, Ronen was a very attractive candidate for Start-up visa program. A few venture funds were very interested in his company and Ronen could have easily become a permanent resident using this program. Ronen, however, acted as a true businessman. He was reluctant about the option to allow other business bodies to invest in his company as he knew that he would have needed to give something in return. He came back to us seeking advice for alternatives. Our recommendation was a clear – LMIA owner-operator for the executive position of Ronen (since he has been working as a CEO of the company and was paid a salary) and the company was in business for more than one year and had filed its taxes, it could support his PR application. Ronen was extremely happy.

We applied for LMIA in support of PR (Labour Market Impact Assessment Permanent Resident stream). After two months, Ronen underwent his interview with a Service Canada officer and after a short exchange of emails with requests to provide a few additional documents to confirm an active business engagement, the application resulted in a positive decision. This was a very happy day for Ronen as he was awarded 200 points for his CRS. Ronen became a permanent resident in 4 months thereafter.

The ultimate goal is to become an eligible candidate for the Canadian business immigration programs. Sometimes, like in Ronen’s case, one doesn’t need to actually apply for permanent residence via a business immigration program but still remain a businessman/woman.