Business Creation Among the Chinese Immigrants in Montreal

With the general aging of the population in North America and the fears of the increasing burden of a retired population on the taxpayers, governments have looked favourably on immigration as a possible way of solving this problem. With immigrants being cast in this role, questions of public policy have been raised on the additional effects of immigration on the host society. The public debate has focused on the economic contributions of immigrants versus their costs to their host economy. Thus the Quebec department of cultural communities has undertaken in the 1980s such a study designed to measure the value of the economic contributions of immigrant entrepreneurs and the federal government has undertaken two studies designed to do the same thing (1) (2). All these studies focused only on “immigrants-entrepreneurs”, (i.e. immigrants who had taken advantage of the categories of visas reserved for people who have promised to create a business in Canada).