Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
An immigration lawyer described the ruse to a conference arranged by the
Asia-Pacific Foundation in 2006. 'Suppose you have someone with a busi-
ness doing not so well. $30,000 looks good to give over temporary ownership.
There are accountants who will write up fraudulent papers to get conditions
lifted.' Such 'ghost' ownership of a business was known to many of the entre-
preneurs we interviewed; a few admitted to using it themselves. 'English is
very important… Many [immigrants] who don't know the language, they pay
someone else to remove the conditions for them'. One respondent even saw
this strategy as a norm among his own national group: 'Ninety percent of …
entrepreneurs are paying someone to get their terms removed'. For a fee that
ranged from around $20,000 to as much as $100,000, nominal ownership of
an existing company could be signed over to an immigrant entrepreneur to
meet the obligatory terms and conditions of immigrant status. With that
hurdle passed, ownership would revert to the original owner. Government
officials are familiar with these shenanigans, and regard them as widespread.
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One jaundiced manager told me there was a high level of creativity in terms
and conditions submissions and added jokingly, 'people here really sit up
when an honest one comes in'. A few years earlier CIC's Director of Business
Immigration had announced that in recent years the unit was aware of
'hundreds' of cases of false documents being submitted claiming ownership
of a 'ghost' business (
Sing Tao
1999).
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This irregular path, by-passing formal state expectations, was usually
arranged ahead of time by consultants but could readily be found by new-
comers themselves. The advertising pages of the three daily Chinese-language
newspapers commonly included opportunities, some posted by consultants,
others privately. For example, a listing in one of the newspapers identified a
service that would find a business for immigrant entrepreneurs costing about
$100,000 and requiring a signed agreement between the 'new' and the 'old
owner'. Telephone calls in Cantonese or Mandarin to similar advertised
options led to the suspicion that under the table ventures were on offer.
Neo-liberal emphasis upon the self-regulating household has readily led
to such practices of workplace informality (Biles 2008). But as Jonakin
(2006) has observed, informality may be portrayed as either virtue or vice.
The entrepreneur operating 'beneath the radar' of bureaucratic monitoring
is displaying creative self-sufficiency, if at the cost of the policies and proce-
dures of the less than surveillant state.
The Controversy over the Disclosure of Global Assets
Business immigrants commonly retained significant offshore funds in
addition to income derived in Canada from entrepreneurial and investment
activity. For some there was an incentive to be less than forthright about the
