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So you’re a Startup Visa applicant for Canada and are stuck in the processing backlog or are uncertain whether your Startup group meets the criteria to convince the IRCC officer to approve you for your PRs. Since there is a lot of discretion used by the IRCC officers to approve or refuse Startup Visa applicants, you may not want to leave it up to ‘luck’ to get your PR approved and move your family to Canada. In this article, we will be reviewing all your possible ‘Plan B’ options as an essential and non-essential member of a Startup Visa group.
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As a non-essential member, you have all the options in the world open to you:
1: You can withdraw anytime without affecting the rest of the group’s members. So we advise you to have your spouse apply under a different stream such as studies or work permit not dependent on your application to have it ready in case of a refusal, to switch over to become your spouse’s dependent.
2: You can apply for a study permit or for your spouse’s study permit.
3: You or your spouse can apply to be hired by a Canadian employer under the PR-supported LMIA for your Express Entry profile or through the Provincial Nominee Program for direct PR.
4: You literally have all programs open to you to apply at any point until a decision is rendered by IRCC on your application for PR with the Startup group. You can make the executive decision to jump ship before or right after – but the key is to have something ‘cooking’ in the pipeline just in case as your plan B.
If you are trying to make up your mind about applying to Canada or the UK through the Startup Visa Program, look no further. That’s our specialty here at INGWE Canada. We will guide and support you throughout the endorsement letter or Letter of Support process and the entire immigration process including work visas and permanent residencies. Get a free email assessment, click here.
We are not too worried about non-essential members, since they can apply and withdraw at any point. The tricky part starts with essential members.
We will divide this group of essential members into those who are inside Canada already with a work permit and those who do not have a work permit yet or have not applied for one.
Here will be your Plan B options as essential members of the Startup Visa group:
If you already have a closed work permit and are already inside Canada or planning to be soon, then here are your options:
1: Like we’ve discussed in some of our previous articles/videos, if you have a closed work permit on the Startup Visa program, have run payroll for yourself for 12 consecutive months as a full-time worker, and can show that you have an executive role such as managing several staff and/departments, then after 12 months you can claim 200 points in Express Entry. Or alternatively, without staff, you can claim 50 points after 12 months of payroll.
Remember that if you do go through Express Entry and apply for your PR, you need to withdraw your previous SUV PR application as you cannot have 2 concurrent Canadian PR applications. If you are an essential member, then we would wait until a decision is rendered by IRCC before you claim these bonus points in Express Entry, otherwise, you would disqualify all the rest of your Startup group members and they would automatically be refused. The only exception to this is if you are the sole founder of this Startup with no other co-founders who applied to the IRCC for their PR.
2: Another option for you in this specific category of having a closed work permit under the SUV program is to apply for Plan B through your spouse or common-law partner.
This is what we suggest: if you are from a visa-exempt country such as Europe, the UK, Australia, Mexico, Chile, Republic of Korea, Japan, or Israel, and so forth then your spouse or partner could apply from your home country or anywhere else where they would be eligible for a study permit not as a dependent of you as a work permit holder.
This study permit would be applied under their own merits, completely independently – this has to be clear in your application to IRCC. You can also apply for a closed work permit for your spouse or partner if they have a genuine offer of employment from a Canadian employer – again a closed work permit for your spouse would mean it would be LMIA or LMIA exempt and NOT an open work permit such as a Spousal Open Work Permit. The purpose of this is to have their status independent inside Canada and to become eligible for other PR programs. If your Startup Visa PR application does not go the way you expected it, then as soon as you receive the decision letter from IRCC you can apply for a spousal open work permit under your spouse’s status inside Canada as a student or worker.
3: If you are from a high refusal or high-volume applicant region such as China, Vietnam, Taiwan, India, Pakistan, Africa, Middle-East, or GCC then you can apply the same suggestion we just explained but do it from inside Canada. This means that you apply for your spouse or common-law partner’s SOWP (Spousal Open Work Permit) from outside Canada, and when they are approved, and after they are inside Canada with the open work permit, you then convert them to a student or worker independent of your status.
This means you move them out of the open work permit into a closed work permit based on a specific LMIA or LMIA exempt stream and make this very clear in the application you submit to the IRCC.
You will need a Canadian employer to offer them a genuine offer of employment inside Canada. The alternative is that as soon as they arrive in Canada with the SOWP, they complete a pre-requisite for an academic program at a public college or university, and within the first 6 months of entry to Canada, you apply to convert them to a study permit.
You may ask: Why don’t I just apply for a study permit based on my own work permit inside Canada – without all these hassles? 🡪 The answer is that if you, God forbid, have a negative decision by IRCC on your PR application under the Startup Visa program, then if your spouse or partner was also inside Canada with a work permit or study permit based on your status, they would all be canceled. But if they have their own study permits or work permits outside of your status inside Canada, then all you do is submit an application for a SOWP under their status – which makes perfect sense as your Plan B. This way you remain in Canada legally, and continue to pursue PR through either Provincial Nominee Program, Rural Program, Atlantic Immigration Program, or Express Entry.
4: We have some applicants who ask us; ”What if my spouse cannot find an employer to hire them or doesn’t want to study? What options do I have then?” The answer is that they can apply under one of the LMIA-exempt International Mobility Programs to start their own business and receive an entrepreneur/self-employed work permit or under the C12 for the intra-Company transfer if they do have an active business overseas. This would convert them to this closed LMIA-exempt work permit, independent of your own closed work permit under the SUV program.
If you’re interested in applying for the Canada Startup Visa, at INGWE we will guide and support you throughout the endorsement letter or Letter of Support process and the entire immigration procedure, including work visas and Canada PR. Get a FREE email assessment with one of our Business Immigration consultants. Fill out the form, click here.
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