British Columbia Provincial Nominee Program (BC PNP) Statistical Report：Entrepreneur Immigration (EI)（3）

Key Staff applications are for key personnel who are attached to a Strategic Projects application, or to an EI-Base application that was received prior  to January 29, 2020. On that date, the EI-Base Category was adjusted to no longer allow principal applicants to include additional key staff in their applications.

Work Permits

If approved  by the Province, applicant entrepreneurs have a specific period of time (18-24 months for the Base or 12-18 months for the Regional Pilot) to establish their businesses before they become eligible for nomination.

Of the 81 work permits approved  in 2021:

• 40 were in the Base category
• 35 were in the Regional Pilot category
• 6 were for Strategic Projects Key Staff

Nominations and Nominee Origins and Destinations

In 2021, the BC PNP nominated 38 entrepreneurs for permanent residency through its EI stream, more than twice as many as the 17 entrepreneurs nominated in 2020. Most of them applied through the EI-Base category. Because the Regional Pilot category was only launched in March

2019, entrepreneurs in that category have only recently begun to have had enough time to complete  the business establishment stage and become eligible for nomination. In the final months of 2021, the BC PNP made its first ever nominations of Regional Pilot applicants.

The 38 nominated entrepreneurs in the BC PNP’s 2021 cohort provided British Columbia with a significant economic benefit. They created 163 new jobs and contributed more than $21 million in total personal investment.

Because of the small number of nominees, it is not possible to provide  useful, complete breakdowns of data on the geographical origins  of entrepreneurs or their destinations in British Columbia. However, it is possible to provide  the following highlights:

• China continued to be the primary country of origin, with half of nominees holding Chinese passports
• Iran was the country of origin that increased the most, moving  up from  having no nominees  in 2020 to having 16 per cent of nominees  in 2021
• As was the case in 2020, nominated entrepreneurs were split roughly evenly between the Mainland/Southwest Development Region and the rest of the province
• 76 per cent of nominees were starting businesses outside of Metro  Vancouver