Canada designs new visa for immigrant entrepreneurs • Hacker News Board

Re: Canada designs new visa for immigrant entrepreneurs

#41

Post by ido » Wed, Sep 12, 2012, 5:02 PM UTC

anovikov wrote: post #40

ido wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

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_&#...

Re: Canada designs new visa for immigrant entrepreneurs

#42

Post by qdpb » Wed, Sep 12, 2012, 5:11 PM UTC

4clicknet wrote: post #20

qdpb wrote: post #4

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 t…

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

Re: Canada designs new visa for immigrant entrepreneurs

#43

Post by anovikov » Wed, Sep 12, 2012, 5:48 PM UTC

ido wrote: post #41

anovikov wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

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).

Re: Canada designs new visa for immigrant entrepreneurs

#44

Post by brightsize » Wed, Sep 12, 2012, 6:03 PM UTC

anovikov wrote: post #32

ido wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 unf…

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…

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.

Re: Canada designs new visa for immigrant entrepreneurs

#45

Post by verelo » Wed, Sep 12, 2012, 6:10 PM UTC

untog wrote: post #37

verelo wrote: post #25

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 applic…

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…

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"