UBC Prof’s Evidence Damns Business Immigrant Programme

Posted on September 28, 2014

UBC Prof’s Evidence Damns Business Immigrant Programme

1. Canada and other countries began giving immigration priority to Business Immigrants (BI’s) in the late 1970′s. In UBC Professor David Ley’s book, Millionaire Migrants”, he refers to the BI as “homo economicus”, that is, “economic man” whose economic capital was prized over the social/educational capital that many traditional immigrants had brought here. This new type of immigration indicated a change from permanent immigration to temporary and circular immigration.

2. Canada is one of 30 countries that have business immigrant programmes.

3. David Ley’s focus is on economic migrants who came from Asia, particularly Chinese from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Over 33 million Chinese have migrated to other countries, 7 million outside of Asia.

4. In 2001, 73% of Chinese Canadians lived in Toronto (410,000) and Vancouver (343,000), a result attributable in part to the BI programme.

5. Although Canada’s motive was to stimulate its economy, the motive of many of Vancouver’s BI’s was to get Canadian citizenship which they regarded as an “insurance policy” against Mainland China’s potential interference in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

6. Canada soon saw that its objectives and those of the Chinese BI’s were opposite. David Ley says : “Departure from the bull markets of East Asia to the slow if steady returns and high taxation of Canada was a dubious economic proposition, and migration was seen much more as an a project to maximize family objectives : geopolitical security, educational options for children, quality of life for the nuclear family and often (a better place for) ageing parents.” (P.26)

7. In 1988, Vancouver’s EXPO 86 lands (about one-sixth of Vancouver’s downtown area) were sold to Hong Kong billionaire Li Kashing at a bargain price. He had been involved in property purchases in Vancouver and other Canadian cities on a small scale in the late 1960′s. David Ley says that in the same year, David Lam was appointed Lieutenant Governor of B.C. This was a very clear symbolic counterpart to the sale of the Expo lands and a clear signal to Asia that B.C. was open to entrepreneurs. (P.55)

8. Between 1980 and 2008. about 400,000 immigrants entered Canada through the BIP. Canada’s high BIP numbers are attributable to how easy it was to enter Canada. (BI’s had to get only 35 points to satisfy immigration requirements compared to 67 for skilled immigrants). (Pp.58-59)

9. Between 1980 and 2001, most immigrants (about 78%) went to three areas : Toronto–40%; Montreal–14%; Vancouver–14.2% Most refugees went to Toronto (35.8%) and Montreal (18.5%). Only 7.0% went to Vancouver. (P.60)

10. Language inability is correlated with failure : 57% of BI’s could not speak French or English, compared to 44% of all immigrants.

11. Korean entrepreneurs were more successful than the Hong Kong and Taiwanese groups because they worked in non-ethnic areas. (P.111) Vancouver and Richmond entrepreneurs recorded the weakest performance because they competed with one another. Their experience confirmed European experience where “breaking-out” of the enclave was seen as a necessity for success. (P.112)

11. Surveys showed that relatively few BI’s (62%) were planning to work here, thus subverting government objectives. This compared to 76% of all immigrants and 85% of skilled workers. Hong Kong, Taiwan, China and South Korea accounted for most of BI’s to Toronto (58%), Montreal (54%), and Vancouver (80%). Most South Koreans came as entrepreneurs. Vancouver took 15,000 more BI’s than Toronto between 1980 and 2001. This was to cause significant increases in Vancouver’s housing market, and make most housing unaffordable. (P.63)

12. A national panel study of more than 12,000 immigrants who landed in 2000-2001 found that 37% of BI’s in Vancouver had purchased single family housing within 6 months, compared with 17% for other immigrants and refugees. (P.64).

13. Canada’s senior immigration officer in Hong Kong incorrectly described Business Immigrants as immigrants landing on their feet running. (Pp.64-65)

14. Ottawa boasted about all of the money that BI’s brought with them : from 1986 to 2005, $8.7 Billion had been registered in subscriptions and about 25,000 jobs maintained or created. It would not be long before officials suspected that the job creation numbers were inflated. About $27 Billion was brought to the Vancouver area in the years 1988 to 1997. (P.70) Huge inflows of billions arrived at banks. (P.71) BI’s sought ways to put money into safe places in order to avoid taxes. Peter Newman’s book, “Titans”, portrayed Asian BI’s as success stories. The Vancouver Sun ran abridged segments of Newman’s book on its front pages. David Bond of the Hong Kong -Shanghai Bank of Canada boasted that if he were the czar of immigration, he would send a fleet of Boeing 747′s to Hong Kong to pick up BI’s. All of this hype was false. Ottawa assumed that these people would be revealing their assets and that it would be receiving significant revenue from Business Immigrants, but that did not happen.

15. In fact, a senior Citizenship and Immigration manager said that gov’ts did not know if the BIP was working—-even after 15 years. (P.108)

16. Many BI immigrants were cheated by immigration consultants. Ottawa knew about this, but did nothing for 24 to 25 years. In 2004, it required consultants to organize themselves into a self-regulating association. “Among the paradoxes of the BIP is how a programme so revered by senior governments has contributed so much anguish among its clients.” (P.120)

17. David Ley conducted two surveys of BI’s. The first was on 24 immigrants. The second was on 90. The results did not flatter the programmes. A large number of BI’s did not file tax returns because they were no longer here. They had satisfied minimal requirements and then left to pursue better opportunities elsewhere. Another study by Marger did a panel study of 70 entrepreneurs in the early 1990′s. Seven years later, half of his panel had disappeared. The majority of the missing were from East Asia.

18. Australia and New Zealand have recorded similar outcomes. Quality of life and better educational opportunities for their children were considered more important than satisfying government objectives.

19. Ottawa tried to introduce laws requiring all Canadians to disclose assets, particularly those being held offshore, but a lobby developed among millionaire migrants in Vancouver, not among WASP lawyers in Toronto, to oppose such legislation. The Chinese lobby was supported by the Glen Clark NDP government in B.C. and by the federal Liberals. By 1998, after China had re-taken Hong Kong and fear of China had eased, investor and entrepreneur immigration from Hong Kong and Taiwan had fallen by 94% and 78% respectively. Many wanted to keep their offshore assets secret in order not to pay their share of taxes. British Columbia MLA Jenny Kwan stated that “the Chinese are very private with their money. This law goes against our culture,” implying that the Chinese should be allowed to operate in Canada by a separate set of rules !! (P.96)

20. Between 1987 and 1997, Hong Kong had been the largest source of immigrants to Canada, reaching 30,000+ per year. However, after 1997, this number fell to 2000 per year. (Pp.73-74) Ottawa’s foreign assets disclosure laws and the Asian Financial crisis that began in 1997 were two important reasons. (P.77)

21. David Ley says ” The economic circumstances of immigrants among the ethnic Chinese population in Canada have been poor. Tax returns in 2000 showed average incomes of $15,000, half the average for the entire population. BI’s reported even lower incomes, around $13,000 with many households declaring incomes below the official poverty line.

22. Entrepreneurs had to show success within two years. They were supposed to be monitored by officials every 6 months. Such monitoring often did not occur, but Ottawa allowed them to stay. To avoid not staying in Canada for the required time each year, business immigrants would go to the U.S., fly to Asia and later return to the U.S. and enter Canada without the perusal of immigration authorities. Many immigrants paid consultants to remove immigration requirements for them and later acquired citizenship illegitimately. CIC was aware of hundreds of cases of fraud, but did little.

23. By the late 1980′s, 50,000 to 60,000 Canadian university graduates worked in HK. Other estimates said that over 200,000 Hong Kong residents held Canadian passports. (P.226) For many HK’ers, return is a distinct possibility; for some, an intended probability. David Ley says that a 2007 study by the Chinese-Canadian Historical Society of B.C. includes the startling estimate that two thirds of Chinese-Canadian males with Canadian citizenship but of Hong Kong origin, and between the ages of 25 and 44, live and work outside of Canada. (P.92)

24. Price Waterhouse reviewed the entrepreneur and self-employed streams in 1989 and found that over half of its list who had landed in the past 2 to 3 years did not respond. Of the other half interviewed, only half were meeting the requirements while only 35% of these businesses were profitable. The consultants concluded that the annual BI scorecard was significantly inflated. In 1992, Ernst and Young concluded that the Investor Immigrant programme exaggerated by three times its actual employment benefits. In 1999, a senior forensic auditor from the World Bank told CIC that its Investor programme contained systemic corruption. It was “a massive sham. The middlemen made hundreds of millions of dollars….Claims about the benefits of the programme in terms of job creation and investment have been widely inflated.” A CIC administrator said that the availability of large capital funds and weak supervision led to “a feeding frenzy, driven by provincial corruption and hungry lawyers, a very dirty programme that brought out the worst in our legal and business group”. (P.121)