Many of the start-up visa routes in Europe, also Canada, are looking for tech businesses rather than import / export. There is a study visa option for Germany that leads to PR and citizenship. There is also a freelancer visa for Germany which may be of interest.
If you have any passive income then there is the D7 visa for Portugal but you would need 635 euros each minimum from e.g. rent or other passive income. There is also a Portugal D2 visa, which is based on you setting up a business in Portugal, and there is no technology restriction.
Are any of these of potential interest?
š§ I am happy to help with your visa and citizenship options. Please contact me through the details here: https://tom-bradford.com/contact–me/
DISCLAIMER: This video is for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal or professional advice. It should not be used as a substitute for legal advice relating to your particular circumstances. Please note that the law may have changed since the date of this video.
Hi what are your visa options if you don’t
have a tech business
um Iāve produced a number of videos on
the start-up and innovator visas
and Iāve put together some courses on
visa academy about the experience of
of people with those types of visas
but we’re also doing some courses on the
the non-tech routes
if you like and um
many people approach me who have
businesses in other areas and
traditional businesses which is which is
fine and that’s
an important area of the economy
um so well there are the answer is
there are options
uh within Europe and
um there are options within the up which
Iāll come to in a moment but I wanted to
highlight some
some uh particular options within Europe
that are of interest
firstly Germany
Germany has a freelancer visa pathway
and also, a visa pathway that enables you
to set up a business and it doesn’t
necessarily have to be in you know in
in tech or a digital business, it could
be in other areas
and Germanyās very keen from a policy
perspective
to attract entrepreneurs and so one of
the
um courses which we’re going to be
releasing on visa
academy is about it’s about that
and by the way you can you can enrol um
for free um and uh yeah invite you
to do so Iāll put the link um below
after Iāve done this video
after Iāve finished this live stream um
but that that is a visa option that
does not require you to have a
tech business and it’s one that does
involve a pathway to permanent residence
and citizenship it’s not
specifically, a citizenship by investment
or anything but it does
secure your residency that leads to pr
and citizenship
um the other one in Germany is the
freelancer visa
and again, we’re including this uh in us
course
and the uh freelancer visa again does
not
does not require a tech business
um it does require you being assessed
um by one of the German provinces
so effectively by the local chamber of
commerce and so there are
an assessment process and it’s important
to bear in mind the
requirements of the principalities when
you’re when you’re applying for the visa
but um but people aren’t often Iām
finding that people aren’t often aware
of them of them
of that as an option
and the other the other visa options I
think you might want to consider
if you’re say you know an entrepreneur
you’re looking to do business in Europe
and you’re looking for an associated
visa pathway is the
options in Portugal which include the d7
visa which Iāve done some videos about
and d7 visa basically requires that you
have
as a passive income and that could
typically, be from
uh from a pension so if you’re if you’re
a retiree but it doesn’t have to be
so, it’s effectively a passive income
visa and that there’s no
uh ink specific uh income requirement as
long as it’s above the minimum threshold
which for the main applicant would be?
the equivalent of about
60 so 635 euros
so many business people will be able to
demonstrate that for example through
showing either rent
from uh investment properties or
from showing passive dividend income
from um
from a company so it can’t be
income from an activity that requires
you to be actively involved in the
business in other words you know
direct earnings are but passive
dividend income
I can suffice and it may be that through
securing a d7 visa that you
achieve your objective which is to
secure residency there’s nothing to
prevent you from starting
um the business uh under that
visa route it’s simply that
you’re achieving it through
another
visa which often is easier now the
other one in Portugal is the d2 visa but
it does require you to be
uh actively uh pursuing a business
in Portugal and that is more involved in
that you need to set up the entity first
and have it trading and typically
there’s a
minimum sort of capital of around 5000
euros that you’d need to put in
but again, that’s a visa
pathway that doesn’t require you to have
a
you know a tech business or a digital
business
uh so um so yeah so bear
bear in mind these non-technology
entrepreneur routes
I know that for the up just to come back
to the up of course it
was possible with the previous tier one
entrepreneur route
to apply on a non-technology
business but since they’ve introduced
the requirements for innovation
scalability and viability
you will people will typically have
as a tech or digital business not
exclusively and the
start-up visa course uh on
on visa academy that Iāve done is
about a bit of business that’s not
exclusive not exclusively tech and you
can see from the other
uh the other applicantsā stories that
some of them aren’t necessarily you know
100 techs
um but broadly speaking there’s you know
that
that’s the policy target of these
visa routes
so, um so there are non-tech options um
do check them out you can you can
contact me to arrange a consultation
happy just
you can also contact you can also
subscribe
to get notifications of course um I do
enrol on visa academy for
information about this
of course, in terms of legal advice this
video is for general information
purposes
should take legal advice if you do want
to engage me Iād be very happy
to assist you and there are details
uh there’ll be details just on the on
the link below Iāll drop them
um on the description after I finish
this
live stream thanks so much for your time
stay safe
and bye for now