Immigration is once again hogging the headlines. Yet, as the Canadian government wages a high-profile campaign to weed out suspected war criminals in our midst, it’s also begun a quieter, more thoughtful consultation with Canadians to reform our current system for selecting new immigrants.
Canadian immigration is, indeed, at the crossroads, and this nationwide consultation is a golden opportunity to further open the doors to those who would make Canada a leader of the 21st-century economy.
Enter the high-tech immigrant entrepreneur.
The notion of the “Startup Visa” is gathering steam in the United States. Foreign-born entrepreneurs are behind more than half the start-ups in Silicon Valley alone. Hence the concerted effort by American businesses and opinion makers to make the U.S. a haven for enterprising techies, to kick-start exciting new business ventures and create jobs for Americans.
In Canada, our government has adopted a blinkered, short-sighted strategy in which immigrants are simply hands for hire to fill labour shortages, rather than vital players in building a new knowledge-driven economy.
The new “streamlined” process involves a fast track for people in certain fields. It’s a motley of professions from cook to cardiologist, with an emphasis on health professionals, technicians and engineers.
To the prospective immigrant, this list is highly misleading as fields such as dentistry and family medicine are impossible for immigrants to break into, thanks to the professional and accrediting bodies that act as overzealous gatekeepers and multiply the hurdles for foreign-trained professionals. Hence the all too common doctor-turned-cabdriver phenomenon in our cities.
There’s an immigrant entrepreneur program at Immigration Canada that’s now indefinitely suspended. This is a real shame, because this is the very channel through which we would get the best “recruits.”
Indeed, immigrant selection in Canada in the 21st century should be carried out by headhunters, not paper-pushers. We should have our immigration agents in Bangalore, Seoul and Moscow scour campuses and companies for promising new technology entrepreneurs.
Then imagine a panel of angel investors, chief technology officers, academics and entrepreneurs back in Canada judging the entrepreneur, his technology and his business idea. Most important, they would evaluate the idea’s potential to create jobs in Canada.
From ; http://nicknoorani.com
