Millionaire immigrant investor program lures only 7 instead of 60

No surprise. Immigrant investor programs always have a ‘cash for citizenship’ aspect to them, with investors making rate-of-return calculations. And while the previous government may have talked up the ‘value’ of citizenship, clearly investors found the cost far greater than the benefits.

Lesson from the pilot – cancel the program:

The Immigrant Investor Venture Capital program, a revamped version of a program critics once denounced as “cash for citizenship,” was launched under the former Conservative government.

It was meant to attract rich immigrants willing to make a non-guaranteed investment of $2 million up front, which would be held for 15 years in a fund managed principally by BDC Capital, the investment arm of the Business Development Bank of Canada, in return for permanent residency. They also had to prove they had even more money in the bank.

But a year after it was launched, the pilot program has yielded just seven applications from potential international investors and no permanent resident visas.

“The demand for this pilot program has been low,” said Nancy Caron a spokeswoman with the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada in an email to CBC News this week.

High-hopes dashed

The previous Conservative government thought it would result in hundreds of applications from rich immigrant investors.

“The program will be open for applications from Jan. 28 to Feb. 11, 2015, or until a maximum of 500 applications are received,” the previous government announced around this time last year.

A year later, Canada is still waiting to welcome it’s first new millionaire immigrant investor.

“A total of seven applications are in process,” said the departmental spokeswoman this week, adding that as of Dec. 30, 2015, four applications had passed a first-stage review and three had passed a second-stage review and were “in process.”

Only when an application reaches the second-stage is it then given a “pass or fail,” Caron explained.

With all seven applications still in process, “No permanent resident visas have yet been issued under this program,” she said.

‘A blank cheque’

The previous Conservative government tightened up the rules under the new pilot after acknowledging that immigrant investors under the old program were not likely to stay in Canada over the long term and contributed “relatively little” to the Canadian economy.

While the Conservatives were hoping to have better luck with this program than they did under the former Immigrant Investor Program, Richard Kurland, an immigration lawyer and policy analyst based in Vancouver, said the pilot was “broken” from the get-go.

“Canada was asking prospective immigrants to write a blank cheque and hope that 15 years down the road they would see any return on that investment,” Kurland said in a phone interview with CBC News.

“It’s no surprise to see that the wealthy immigrant investor crowd would look at other immigration possibilities to come to this country in order to grow our economy, create jobs and find a secure place for their own families.”

Source: Millionaire immigrant investor program lures only 7 instead of 60 – Politics – CBC News