Business Class Visas

YOU SELECTED THIS OPTION BECAUSE:You wish to immigrate to Canada under the Business Class Category (Self-Employed, Entrepreneur, Investor)

A business class visa is an immigrant visa that takes into consideration your management experience and ability to manage a company as opposed to formal academic or vocational training or even language proficiency.

The various business categories (self-employer, entrepreneur and investor) are based on the size of the company, your net worth and the financial levels you are willing to invest in Canada over a given time.

Available Business Class visa stream include the following sub-categories:

• Self-Employment Visas (Quebec and Federal Only)
• Start-Up Program – Federal Entrepreneur
• Entrepreneur Provincial Nominee Program – (Provincial – see chart below)
• Investor Program

Our boutique firm is uniquely positioned to serve business people because our leading practitioner has worked with small and large businesses as a management consultant for over ten years. In this vein, the firm has partnered with two business developers for the express purpose of supporting entrepreneur applicants.

If you own a business and are thinking of establishing yourself in Canada, we invite you to schedule a phone or office consultation to explore all your business options. We’ll review the pros/cons of each stream, their obligations, and most importantly, the time it takes to obtain a decision. An experienced practitioner should be able to offer a recommendation based on a combination of all these factors.

We also have local contacts in almost every major city of Canada who can assist you to incorporate a Canadian branch, affiliate or wholly-owned subsidiary. In programs where a professionally written business plan is required, our firm works with two independent vendors that have business development experience (should you need a referral).

The smallest business class program is the Self-Employer stream, where the requirement is simply to justify your own job. The self-employer program generally applies to self-proprietors such as hairstylists, models or freelance journalists or bloggers. The more exclusive business class program is the investor program which requires a net worth of $1.6 million, management experience and the ability to invest a large sum of money for over 60 months at no interest as a “passive investment”.

In between the self-employer and investor programs, are nine (by today’s count) entrepreneur visas. To date, only Alberta and Ontario do not have entrepreneur programs. (Although an applicant is certainly welcome to settle in Alberta as an entrepreneur under the Federal program.) One program, the Start-Up Visa program, requires that you obtain funding on your own.

In short, there are so many variants to the Business Class immigrant streams that it generally takes a full two-hour session to review and identify the best one for the client.

The typical net worth requirement of an entrepreneur program is $300,000 to $400,000. The typical investment levels required of entrepreneurs will range from $100,000 to $200,000 over a one- to two-year period excluding a full-time Canadian hire.

The various business class visas and their sub-streams by jurisdiction are outlined in the table below:

*The federal self-employed program is limited to professional athletes and artists only.
Note: Due to space limitations, the above table does not include the immigrant programs of the three territories of Canada including the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

If you are thinking about an entrepreneurial visa, we urge you to schedule a consultation to review all your options as identified in the above table. For an appointment, contact our US Head Office in Dallas at 214-295-6051.

Firm Deliverables for Business Class Applicants:

• Assessment of program eligibility and the best visa stream for application
• Assessment of required paperwork to support a Business Class application
• Description of the pros/cons in each program
• Preparation of government forms
• Assembly of relevant supporting documentation
• Representation before the government agency