The year 2022 is witnessing a massive surge in immigrants opting for a Start-up Visa to establish new businesses. Canada welcomes 250 immigrants in the first five months, highlighting the remarkable popularity of the Start-up Visa pathway in the Canadian immigration system.
British Columbia and Ontario benefitted most with the Start-up Visa program welcoming 200 and 125 new permanent residents each.
The figure improves the prospects of meeting the aim of welcoming 600 new immigrants as permanent residents under the Start-up Visa program. It will be the highest number of immigrants till now since the launch of the SUV program in 2013.
The Start-up visa program mandates the candidates to live in Canada on a work permit with the support of a Canadian investor. They can subsequently apply for permanent residence.
IRCC recognizes three types of private sector investors to support Start-up visa candidates. These are business incubators, venture capital funds, and angel investors.
The year 2019 saw a nine-fold increase as the number of immigrants getting permanent residence under the Start-up visa was 515, as against 55 in 2015. We can attribute the steep decline in the number of new permanent residents under the SUV pathway to stringent COVID-19 restrictions, such as border closures.
There was a massive drop of 45.9 percent as Canada welcomed 184,585 new immigrants in 2020, as against 341,175 new permanent residents in 2019. There was a similar shortfall in new immigrants under the SUV immigration pathway.
The Temporary-to-Permanent Resident pathway improved the outlook, as Canadian immigration permitted 90,000 temporary residents to become permanent residents. Re-opening the Canadian borders and easing public health restrictions resulted in a whopping 406,005 permanent residents settling in Canada.
