Survey: Immigrants Rule When It Comes to Setting Up Shop

Toronto - An annual survey of entrepreneur start-ups shows that while among native-born Canadians, non-born canadians are starting up businesses at a fastest clip than others, overall it’s mostly immigrants setting up shop.

New immigrants, Asian Canadian entrepreneur start-ups grow, an assesment founded.The assessment found that immigrants far outpaced native-born canadians in entrepreneurial activity last year, but this is nothing new.

"Immigrants in the past have had higher rates of entrepreneurship than native-born" .
A few theories have arisen as to why immigrants start more businesses than native-born. For one, immigrants are self-selected to be entrepreneurial.

"They chose to make a major move often for economic reasons, and thus differ from the native-born and residents of their home countries".

Another explanation is that they have access to inexpensive and trusted labor in more recent immigrants. Some of these immigrants may even be highly educated but their education qualifications acquired in countries of origin are not recognized in Canada.

Small business owners create a lot of jobs and innovative ideas…many people argue that entrepreneurship is important for economic advancement, employment, and political power, ". Asian experienced the only increase in rates of entrepreneurial activity among major ethnic and racial groups.

Several years ago, the assesment found that restaurants, retail shops and services to be popular immigrant businesses. "(They are popular) probably, because they require less startup capital overall and less Canada education…non-professionals".

Regions experiencing the highest rates of entrepreneurial activity tend to be concentrated among Vancouver, Ontario and Alberta. Entrepreneurship in the last decade has been relatively steady. However, the report for 2002-2008 reveals some changes.

Entrepreneurial activity has been on the rise since 2003. Canada continues to be a very entrepreneurial nation," ."The large portion of entrepreneurial firms and the significant number of jobs created by smaller, newer and growing firms in Canada are a strong indication that the entrepreneurial sector, with its flexibility and capacity to adapt quickly, is poised to become an even more important factor in our nation's economic growth."