Enter the Canada Startup Visa, released last week:

http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/02/silicon-valley-north-canad...

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/business/start-up/ind...

That's incredible! Thanks for the link :)

EDIT: Bah, too bad they demand proof of secondary education. Sucks for people who couldn't afford college...

The same problem occurs for a Canadian with no college degree (but tons of freelance dev experience) wishing to move to SV. Anyone here know a good way to get around that?

Some details: I took two years of university so far, but ran out of money to keep going. I'm now living month-to-month (averaging about "feed myself and pay rent for a room") doing severely underpaid web-app development (think ELance rates.) Apparently my skillset (Ruby, Erlang, systems-level/embedded C, Clojure, some Cocoa Touch experience) would be making me at least $100K/yr in SV, but nobody wants it up here in Vancouver; it's all ASP shops and C++ game-dev, and most of the gigs I do get end up being in PHP, even though it's not my forte.

I really don't want to spend however-many more years it would take to pay my way through school at this rate, struggling out in the software "hinterlands", when a better life is just one border-crossing away.

And technically, If I'm asking for a pony, I don't really want to get hired by a Microsoft or a Google and only work in the US for them; I want to go to the US because I want to participate in SV startup culture, which both includes working for a startup, and starting my own. It seems like that possibility is just locked out for anyone but permanent residents of the US, though.

If by diploma you mean a 2 year (which is usually what it means in Canada), it won't be enough on its own.

You can actually get an exemption if you can demonstrate equivalent knowledge and a career progression towards it. What that usually means is having a professor of your field vouch for your knowledge and being able to prove work history for 3 or 4 years of each of the four years of university you didn't take. A two year diploma may cut that amount in half, but I wouldn't necessarily count on it.

If your work history is hard to prove you may want to try other types of visas. TN-1s aren't so difficult, but re-entry can apparently be a pain. You can also get an equivalent to an H-1B by working for a Canadian subsidiary (of, say, MS or Google) for about a year and then getting a transfer to the American head office. I believe these are much easier to get.

And then there's the traditional ways, like being sponsored by family etc. Unfortunately, no matter what, a degree will make it much much easier.

> If by diploma you mean a 2 year (which is usually what it means in Canada), it won't be enough on its own.

I really did mean a four-year; I just said "diploma" because "degree" implies education was involved. The diploma is the piece of paper. :)

> prove work history for 3 or 4 years

Does that mean employment history? I don't have much of that. Completed contracts, certainly, but I've not been "on payroll" anywhere for more than six months at a time.

Well, in Canada it's very unusual to call a bachelors a diploma. The piece of paper is a degree. Diplomas are for two year colleges and high schools.

I think the work history requirements might have relaxed in recent years a bit, but not by much. 10 years seems to be the point where most American employers start to seem optimistic about being able to get you an H-1B without a degree. But if it's not employment experience you'll have to work twice as hard to document it, and that can be very difficult. Most of my work history, for example, is tied up in companies that no longer exist or as contracts, as with you.

http://careers.microsoft.com/careers/en/ca/home.aspx https://jobs.ea.com/locations/canada/ http://www.google.ca/about/jobs/locations/waterloo/

I also think there was an article here recently about Facebook setting up a Vancouver office just to bring graduates through the subsidiary employment process. It's a one year thing specifically for that purpose.

Drop me a line: box2850 at hot mail com dot. We have dozens of open coding jobs in Vancouver - and none of them are ASP or C++ game dev.

Last time you checked was probably before last December's massive overhaul of the points system (which goes into effect in 4 weeks).

Hint: If you're an English speaking American with more than 5 years of work experience or a bachelors degree you have enough points- no investment fund needed.

See: http://gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p1/2012/2012-08-18/html/reg2-eng....

> Hint: If you're an English speaking American with more than 5 years of work experience or a bachelors degree you have enough points

As an English speaking South-African finishing a PhD at an American university, it's good to know there are other options if the U.S. decides not to give me an H1-B (the quota was exceeded in the first week, so apparently we all get put through a lottery: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5513761)

Canadian residents are covered by universal healthcare, can vote, can work, etc. (That's a lot more than the U.S. offers residents.)

You need 67 points to get residency status in Canada.

With the new system:

PhD? 25 Points

Speak English? 24 Points

Under 35? 12 points (less 1 point per year over 35)

1 Year of work experience? 9 points

Total: 70 points

There are a lot more ways you can get points. But if you're a young or middle aged English speaker with a degree or a few years of job experience, you're in.

Anyone know how long the entire process takes -- from sending in the application, all the way to being able to cross the border with a moving van -- using the points system?

When I did it in 2004 it took one year almost to the date to get the approval, another 6 months to get the visa (you need to submit medical test). There is/was a web site where people posted their times so you could get an idea, also there's the official site, I don't remember if they give some times.

It used to average about 6-8 months. With the overhaul going into effect next month, they expect it to take 4 to 12 weeks for Americans and 12 to 16 weeks for other countries.

Canadian residents most definitively cannot vote, they pretty much can do the same as a citizen except for voting and spending too much time out of the country.

I think that's for the investor visa, I immigrated as a skilled worker (points system)

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/skilled/ , currently you only need to prove 11k in savings and the other requirements seem pretty accessible to anyone imho.

@versiononevc is one of the funds that is designated for Startup Visa Canada - shoot me an email, happy to talk