Chinese immigrants' road to Canada blocked

An agency promotes the Immigrant Investor Plan to clients in Shanghai on March 18, 2012. [Photo: The Beijing News]

Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will announce the 2014 Budget which, according to the Globe and Mail, will cancel the popular immigrant investor program.

The program, after being suspended in July 2012 due to a vast backlog, will be replaced by two pilot projects: an immigrant investor venture capital fund and a business skills program.

Under the previous program, foreigners with a net worth of more than 1.6-million Canadian dollars were allowed to gain residency and potentially citizenship by lending the government 800,000 Canadian dollars that would be paid back in about five years without interest.

Over 130,000 people have reportedly immigrated to Canada through the investor plan since it was enabled in 1986, mostly from China.

In 2011, 63 percent of immigrants gained their citizenships via the investor program, 79 percent of which are from Asia.

After more than two decades of operation, there have been complaints that these wealthy immigrants, mostly Chinese, use their Canadian citizenship to buy property in, and move their family to Canada but continue doing business in Asia.

Many of these investors have only tenuous ties to the country and pay "significantly lower taxes over a lifetime" than other immigrants, said the Canadian government.

They are said to have boosted housing prices in Canada but had little effect on economic development.

As reported by the Beijing News, over 53,500 applications submitted through the Canadian Immigration Office in Hong Kong are on the waiting list, which will not be processed. Their fees will also be refunded.