Cassandra Brennan: I’m Cassandra.

Amy Grey: I’m Amy. Hello. Good morning.

Stacy Wu: Stacy.

ST Peng: I’m ST from Audrey’s office, so let’s start. I think Cassandra had some topics to share with us.

Audrey Tang: OK.

Cassandra Brennan: We are a Canadian immigration company, and we work in the way that we help people move to Canada. Mainly, we are one of three people in all of Taiwan that are able to do this job. Well, myself and then Amy and Stacy are my, I would say, my dynamic trio.

Cassandra Brennan: What we’re having a difficult time doing is getting a license in Taiwan. It is about NT $1.5 or 2.5 million, Taiwanese, to get this license. In Canada, immigration is regulated by the Canadian Government. Anyone who is doing this job without this license from Canada is breaking the law.

Cassandra Brennan: What I’ve noticed doing my research is that there are over 25 different companies here that offer Canadian Immigration Services, but none of them are connected to a Canadian Immigration consultant. We call ourselves a Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant, or RCIC for short.

Cassandra Brennan: We were hoping to discuss with you the things that we think would be very beneficial for Taiwan on its road to bilingualism, because we have a lot of partners with different schools in Canada that will allow for grades 7-12 education.

Cassandra Brennan: That would really help, in my opinion, coming from a bilingual country, Amy as well. That would be really beneficial for Taiwanese students.

Cassandra Brennan: We wanted to get your take on whether you’d be able to help us navigate the MOJ, and the different economic affairs offices and the people that we might have to speak with, in order to be able to forego that NT $1.5 million deposit that they want from people, as we are just starting our own company. I’ve just been licensed since January 8th, 2019.

Audrey Tang: When you say, your company, is it registered in Canada or do you also have a registered company in Taiwan?

Cassandra Brennan: It’s only registered in Canada as of right now because we don’t count [laughs] to register without that money.

Audrey Tang: You can also register a general-purpose consultancy in Taiwan without a license, but you haven’t done that. That means you’re Gold Card visa or some other visa?

Cassandra Brennan: We each have our APRCs. We were English teachers. I’ve been here for almost 14 years, and Amy, just over 9.

Audrey Tang: Before the Gold Card, right? You are the original…

Cassandra Brennan: Yeah. We are OGs.

Audrey Tang: You’re the original gangsters.

Audrey Tang: Excellent. As APRCs, I believe that’s your, aside from voting, but for most particular purposes you’re citizens. In this case, that also means that you’ll be subject to any restriction or limitation, including the capital limits that citizens also have.

Audrey Tang: In some sense the APRC status, in this case, makes it not easier for any kind of navigation to be done differently, because then any citizen would say, “We want the same exception, too”. You understand that, right?

Cassandra Brennan: Yeah. That was one of the things that I had noticed is, in order to have a license like mine, you have to be a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident. You can’t just go to school and receive this degree. You must hold Canadian citizen or permanent residency status in Canada in order to do my job.

Cassandra Brennan: It’s a little different than America, the UK, and Australia, as I’ve looked up. There’s not as many regulations regarding immigration consultants. This is to safeguard the people that we help. Canadian laws are made to safeguard our clients, not necessarily ourselves. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: I see. Even if you’re dual citizens, the law will apply exactly the same. APRC versus citizenship doesn’t make a difference here.

Audrey Tang: The other question I would like to ask is that have you contacted the Canadian office in Taiwan, i.e., their de facto embassy?

Cassandra Brennan: Yes. We have quite a few contacts at Canadian trade office. That’s how we met you the first time, was at the Women in Business Asia Conference in March where you were a panelist.  They have transferred and changed places now.

Cassandra Brennan: We have meetings with them coming up at the end of the year, and we’ve also been in contact with Francis Fung and Joseph Hsu at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. So, we have been in contact. Actually, she was in your office when we set up the meeting for today. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: OK. What you’re saying is that the CTOT, the Canadian Trade Office in Taiwan, have not yet determined their strategy in engaging with you and helping your course. That is what I’m hearing.

Cassandra Brennan: Yeah, we’ve even been in touch with the people in Canada Chamber of Commerce and the College if Immigration and Citizenship Consulants to get a letter to support because Canada has as of the 23rd of November changed governing bodies. Instead of calling it the ICCRC, now we are called the CICC, and that gives them legal right to pursue illegal agencies.

Cassandra Brennan: Prior to the 23rd of November, there was no money, but the government has given them $448 million to start pursuing illegal companies. I’ve done quite a few cold calls. For example, a sponsorship of a family of two for me to do is around NT $100,000, and they are charging around 600,000. They are not educated as to how the process works.

Cassandra Brennan: At the moment, we can still help foreign clients and we can help people from outside Taiwan, but the NT $1.5 million buy-in and deposit – and they also call it a way of ensuring that you don’t break the rules – that has always applied to every person in immigration, and that was preceding from using the new governing body.

Cassandra Brennan: We wanted to be able to try to explain the new rules to somebody who could understand where we’re coming from because of our partnerships with the schools, and our understanding of how difficult it is to become a bilingual country.

Cassandra Brennan: We wanted to focus more on the junior high school/senior high school age so that the government could use its government grants to help those children study, and then they wouldn’t be eligible for citizenship.

Cassandra Brennan: They would be returning to Taiwan to help along the road of bilingualism, which is important, as I’m sure of yourself as being internationally educated as well. You don’t become bilingual until you immerse yourself in that bilingual country (雙語國家) – If I don’t live here, I wouldn’t have learned the language.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, until the day that metaverse makes it easier to migrate virtually, we will rely on the face-to-face interactions. That’s certainly true. Does your colleague have anything to add or to chime in?

Cassandra Brennan: Yeah, Stacy has some good points about that, but I’m going to let Amy go with what we do, and then give Stacy the floor for her position as a Taiwanese person as well.

Amy Grey: Yes. Basically, everything Cassandra said, this is our main goal. We do want to help a lot of students here in Taiwan and schools to be able to have that pathway to be able to send students abroad, so that they can learn in an English environment, and then come back and be able to contribute to Taiwan and its bilingualism.

Amy Grey: That’s something that we’re pushing for. It’s a lot of barriers for us and it’s been difficult for us to navigate. I feel we’ve gone as far as we could with our own order, and now we’ve hit some walls. We’re just looking for guidance and advice about that.

Audrey Tang: In the case that you will still need the deposit, is there a natural next step for you to start raising a new round or some investment?

Cassandra Brennan: We just recently came second in the Taipei Meet Dragons’ Chamber Event on the 20th of November, a couple of weekends ago, I guess, now, we were hoping to find any sort of investment out of that, but the Dragons have yet to collect enough in an angel fund to do so. We’re still waiting.

Cassandra Brennan: We are pursuing some investment in Canada. It is very hard for Taiwanese investors to understand how their money can be used with regards to that much would be going into just allowing us to operate. It’s been one of the more difficult roadblocks we found because they don’t think that money would be used to its full extent if we were just putting it into a bank account as bond.

Audrey Tang: I see. Of course, the investment scale also makes a difference. If it’s a part of a larger investment for many different services, then that could be treated as a smaller portion of operation fee, essentially. If the service is concentrated on getting this license, then it seems like a much larger ratio. I see your point.

Cassandra Brennan: Why don’t you go ahead, Stacy, and give Audrey an idea of what she might understand from your perspective.

Stacy Wu: I was born here. I learned my English in Taiwan and went to school just like you. We are the same age. Coming from the same generation, I’m sure you can understand what I’m going to say next.

Stacy Wu: From my experience, all of these, like the lacking of language exposure to English, it’s making it so difficult for students to learn, especially listening and speaking abilities. I have been an English teacher for 17 years in Taiwan so far. I don’t really see that situation improves that much, and I am very surprised since the resource’s a lot better than what we had before.

Stacy Wu: The second one is all the textbooks. I understand a lot of people are doing a lot of work to make the textbooks look better and more useful, but still there are words that we learned from textbooks are outdated. For example, I learned “So Long” before, but nobody uses it.

Stacy Wu: Then the lack of culture exposure. Students don’t understand the mindset of someone from a foreign country and they don’t understand jokes. They don’t understand sarcasm.

Stacy Wu: The next one that I think is so important is we as Taiwanese don’t have an idea of diversity, and so every time they see something different or someone different, they quickly have that judgment. I’m sure you would understand a lot. Why do we have that? Because everyone in Taiwan look the same, so that idea of diversities doesn’t exist in Taiwan.

Stacy Wu: The last point I’m going to say is we don’t realize the importance of using that language until we start using it, for example, you go traveling or talking to people.

Stacy Wu: Then one more thing that I wanted to say is having a Taiwanese passport and I don’t have a rich family, it’s been difficult for me to find a proper job abroad. Since I don’t have any engineering background, it’s pretty hard for me to actually do that.

Stacy Wu: I would want to have that kind of cultural exposure and experience, but I don’t find that change. I’m excited about the idea of Taiwan becoming bilingual, and I want to be part of it.

Stacy Wu: All of our team members have been teachers forever, and we want to help students to overcome all those obstacles that we don’t have in Taiwan. That’s why we’re having this meeting with you today.

Cassandra Brennan: On top of that, I want to mention as well one of the people we met with Revital Shpangental. I’m sure you might know her as…

Cassandra Brennan: She owns Anemone Ventures Ltd.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, I know her.

Cassandra Brennan: She’s one of the Dragons Amy and I were lucky enough to have her in the office on Monday down in Taichung at our office and she mentioned, “Have you looked at any of the grants?” Yes, there are lots of grants in Taipei, but we have a beautiful 24th floor corner office for NT $9,000 a month.

Cassandra Brennan: Here in Taichung we’re very lucky, but in order to have something similar to that we would need to spend thousands and thousands of dollars to have an office with a door, in order to be qualified for some of those grants available in Taipei.

Cassandra Brennan: We were wondering if there was any that you are able to help us look into or certain grants available in Taichung city. At this point, there aren’t that many from what I’ve found. Also, for women in business, the first place winner is also a woman from Taichung.

Cassandra Brennan: So, two women took the top two spots which is cool, both have ideas for children in education. If we were able to find maybe some of these grants, this money would help with the license registration wouldn’t use any angel investor money to do what we need.

Audrey Tang: OK. Well, there’s the Fain projects, specifically for women entrepreneurs. ST can follow up with some links. I just pasted one on the Skype chats. I would also say that there’s this comprehensive list of the official grants investments and things like that.

Audrey Tang: That’s the go-to-place if you want to get any kind of grant or investment or something. There is this major list… I’m sorry that this is in Mandarin. I think there’s an English version of the list. Anyway, I’m sure that you can navigate this.

Audrey Tang: All the grants, investments, incubation-related offers by the local municipal and central government are listed there. If it’s not listed there, it’s probably not from the government. That’s my answer.

Audrey Tang: From what I heard, just to check my understanding, you’re doing essentially what we call here 遊學留學 educational consultants. That’s the trade you’re in?

Cassandra Brennan: No. We would working in immigration. What I do as an RCIc is handle all of the student visas applications to ensure they are complete, giving them the best chance for a successful results. Their schools will direct them to the education advisors or maybe the schools we work with.

Cassandra Brennan: We work with the entire districts of public schools in Canada. All of our districts have homestay programs. The kids would not be staying in dormitories, they would be living with parents and families of kids that go in that district. They would be able to experience what it’s like to live in Canada.

Cassandra Brennan: We have a few university partners, like Ryerson. You did speak to the chancellor, Janice, back in March. She’s wonderful. The problem that I find with the university partners is that you don’t become bilingual in four years once you’ve already developed your skills and your specialty.

Cassandra Brennan: The students will also have a chance to maybe study music, photography, or something that is available to us for summer programs.

Audrey Tang: I see.

Cassandra Brennan: These opportunies would be directly with the schools we work with. The children work with education advisors who help them find universities and we would process visa applications. We would connect younger students (grade 7-12) or one of our private school partners who also offer homestay programs.

Cassandra Brennan: We focus mainly on the East Coast, the West Coast, and then where I’m from in Ontario. Amy’s from Nova Scotia, so we focus a lot on the East Coast as well. We have quite a few districts of public schools on the West Coast as well, but all our exclusive partnerships.

Cassandra Brennan: In Ontario, there’s a vast number of schools that the children can choose from and join a homestay program (grade 7-12). These programs and their education would give them a better chance to study at Canadian universtities or schools like NTU in Taiwan.

Cassandra Brennan: My thoughts are working with the local MOEs and the government to encourage them to offer grants for public school students who are exemplary. This way, it can help them get a Canadian education and be emersed in an English culture. With the government providing them with grants, they will inevidably return to Taiwan and to be a part of the road to bilingualism.

Audrey Tang: I see. In that sense then, I understand your explanation. You’re purely, what we call by the Ministry of Interior, a Immigration Business Organization, IBO, rather than any other like Ministry of Education or other ministries, apparently.

Cassandra Brennan: Yeah. That’s what makes our NT $1.5 million buy-in a little bit more…

Audrey Tang: That’s right. That’s at a higher level of requirements?

Cassandra Brennan: Yeah.

Audrey Tang: If you’re a MOE operation, then there’s no such deposit. There’s, I think, still some capital kind of threshold, but there’s no special deposit. Special deposit is just a MOI part.

Cassandra Brennan: Yeah.

Audrey Tang: Well, since you decided to work on MOI part… Another thing that I’ve heard is that you’ve not registered a Taiwanese company because you said that you would need a license to do that.

Audrey Tang: But from what I understand, it’s the other way around. You first set up a Taiwanese company, and then apply for a MOI license. I don’t think there’s anything precluding you from setting up a local company.

Cassandra Brennan: OK. Stacy noticed that we would have to provide the accountant with the paperwork and deposit and then they will process the business registration for us.

Audrey Tang: I think it’s lowered now. You even just have one person with NT $100,000 or something like that. That would also work. It could also be a trivial amount of money.

Cassandra Brennan: We will contact the minitery of interior to dicuss as how to proceed with our registration.

Cassandra Brennan: Stacy is actually one of the very first people I met when I landed on this island. We were teaching together back in Changhua in 2008. I’ve begged her to come on board with us, and I’m happy she’s accepted it. She has some ideas as to how she can help us with that basic starting point.

Cassandra Brennan: I know Amy and I can easily put forth $100,000 if that’s what it takes to get the name.

Audrey Tang: I mean, less also works. There’s no capital threshold, I’m just using that as a figure to say that it’s usual to use that and not because you probably want to look like you’re not setting a NT $1,000 company. That’s technically illegal. I’m pasting you the link of the One Stop Service Request for a Starting Company Business and Limited Partnerships. That may help.

Audrey Tang: The reason why I say this is that there’s a lot of consulting resources for local companies but there’s not as much resources for the foreign companies operating in Taiwan without a Taiwanese office. My office hour, theoretically, there’s only open to social innovators who register at local companies, but that is fine, I’m not very strict about that.

Cassandra Brennan: I’m so grateful you were lenient and agreed to meet with us. Once we register, we will be sure to complete your social innovation network regestration. I’m grateful I tried to set up this meeting with you.

Audrey Tang: The SMEA, the small and medium enterprise administration has a lot of resources to essentially coach the startups that has been registered in Taiwan for less than five years. From the moment you register, you’ll get five years of consultation for essentially free service because you are then a Taiwanese startup.

Audrey Tang: My suggestion is you can change your company name in the future if you can’t settle on a name. I changed my name before. The point here is that if you are a Taiwanese company, and a startup and a small and medium enterprise and a women entrepreneur, and doing something that’s socially innovative, you’re eligible for all different coaching services.

Cassandra Brennan: Wonderful. That’s great. I’ve opened all the links, that way, Stacy can go through them as well. This is all great. Again, similar to what I was hoping to get from this conversation is some guidance as to how to approach starting this process, and then how and who to talk to when it comes to the MOI and the MOE.

Audrey Tang: The other thing I know, I’ve been a entrepreneur for many, many years. It’s hard for an entrepreneur to hear this, but I must say this: Have you considered working with some other institution that has already done the deposits and part of the immigration consortium or not.

Audrey Tang: There’s already a list of people who are working on these businesses, maybe without a Canadian portfolio. It could be conceivably that you will open a Canadian portfolio with them in a joint venture without having to pay the deposit yourself.

Cassandra Brennan: That is a very good point. The list that I was given was only a partial list. If you know how we can find that full list of registered companies.

Audrey Tang: Here is a list of all the companies that have joined the Immigration Consultants Association, the TCA. If you want a more comprehensive list, even the organizations that have not joined such associations, I’m pretty sure that you can obtain it from the MOI.

Audrey Tang: Just ask the MOI. That may be easy. You can write an email to the MOI saying, “I would like to know the link that all the registered companies within the immigration business.” That would do.

Cassandra Brennan: That’s a great plan. Then we have the ability to help one or some of these companies ensure they are working with a licensed RCIC. It would be nice to be able to help one of those companies that exist and offer them services and face-to-face consultations.

Cassandra Brennan: Since there are only three registered consultant in Taiwan, we would be able to offer them any unique opportunity that would definitely benefit both their clients and their businesses.

Cassandra Brennan: Thank you for providing us with the list. We will do some research and approach some companies that we might be able to help.

Audrey Tang: Definitely. I’ve found an operating service code for immigration services and that’s JA04011. If you use that on any search engine or whatever, you can find the list of companies that have registered getting the license.

Audrey Tang: If you use the same keyword search on the GCIS, the company list, if you’ll type that on the search box on the top-right of that particular website. Then, you could see the list of requirements and who to contact. The most important thing is that you can call Ms. Wang, listed here, at a certain telephone and then ask for any clarifications if you want to, for example, get a membership list or want to join with non-Canadian already operating on immigration services.

Cassandra Brennan: That’s great. That helps a lot. When you went to America after quitting school and opening up your first, did you find it was as difficult for? What we’ve notice, and Elias says this about it in his book of “How to Start a Business in Taiwan,” is that the banks are unfriendly to foreigners.

Cassandra Brennan: We wouldn’t want to put Stacy in a position where is the Taiwanese face of our company in order to be able to qualify for something that maybe a foreigner with an APRC, and this experience should be eligible for but struggle to communicate and obtain business or personal loans even if we may be eligible.

Audrey Tang: It’s is eligible, but for many people in Taiwan, offering the same service in English could be scary.

Cassandra Brennan: Right.

Audrey Tang: It’s not about you. It’s about exactly the same public servants offering exactly the same service to APRC or citizen doesn’t matter. If the citizen or APRC holder suddenly said, “Oh, I only speak English,” then they get into this, “Am I making grammatical mistakes about that…?”

Cassandra Brennan: That’s a very good point. I’m going to suggest that for Elias and his speech. I have found when I went to HSBC, if I took a Taiwanese person with me, it was much more difficult for the bank lady because she had more intricate questions.

Cassandra Brennan: Whereas, when I went by myself, I had no problems getting a HSBC bank account. My language was enough to explain what I needed. Also, hers was limited enough that she didn’t need to ask the difficult questions because I was able to answer the simplified ones.

Audrey Tang: Exactly. Maybe we should treat our citizens with simplified ones to begin with.

Cassandra Brennan: Maybe. I always tell Stacy remind me when I ask you to help me make a simple phone call. Something as easy as getting my free months of Internet service for referring somebody in my community to remind me to do it myself.

Cassandra Brennan: It’s easier for me than having someone ask Stacy a bunch of questions that don’t apply to why I’m calling. I always remind her to remind me I can do it.

Cassandra Brennan: My Chinese is usually enough for me to communicate what I would like to say, but it makes it more simple for everyone involved.

Audrey Tang: OK, excellent. Did you have any other topics on the agenda?

Cassandra Brennan: I think Stacy still has a few more notes?

Stacy Wu: Now after speaking with you, I think I know how to approach our business registration which will help us get our exclusive license to allow us to provide our services and make people’s dreams come true. With an exclusive license and the right to help kids through the MOE and MOI study in Canada.

Stacy Wu: Canada is a very safe place, carrying a gun is not allowed.

Stacy Wu: It’s a much more similar environment for them as a Taiwanese kid, and it’s also safer, so the parents wouldn’t worry too much, compared to a lot of these other countries. It’s much more enjoyable for both the parents and the students.

Cassandra Brennan: Yes, especially because the price for an education, as an international student, it’s around 56,000 for let’s say, an engineering degree and that’s the price for the entire four years. The price of a semester for a local American citizen at university is around 50,000 dollars so I can only imagine for an interantional student, meaning cmopared to America, where you get only a semester, there’s far more affordable investment for parents. Canada is high recognized for its quality of education.

Cassandra Brennan: What we are trying to do, is also offer the government our idea and use the grants that are available for children grade 7-12, giving them a chance to study in some of the top destinations for education in Canada. Taiwan also has a tax treaty for businesses that operate in both Canada and Taiwan.

Cassandra Brennan: I promised Francis Feng that I was going to put that flag in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, if I had to bring it myself.

Cassandra Brennan: I do believe that we’re missing out, Canada and Taiwan have offered similar working holiday visas and Taiwanese people receive a six-month visa waiver on arrival in Canada and only required to obtain an ETA. That’s a good chunk of time.

Audrey Tang: Yes. I’m aware of that. I’ve done some homework.

Audrey Tang: OK. Thank you for the efficient, effective, and candid conversations. I look forward to seeing you register as a local Taiwanese company. You have to do all the research and settling on a temporary, at least, name. Anyways, it’s not like tomorrow, but that will open up more doors, especially to start up an entrepreneurship-related grants or programs in Taiwan.

Cassandra Brennan: Thank you very much, and so much, for your time. I am so grateful that Amy, Stacy and I are able to spend this time speaking with you, even though we are all in different places. All three of us were so excited to meet you.

Cassandra Brennan: All three of us were having a Michael Jackson moment.

Audrey Tang: OK. We’re now socially distanced, in a sense.

Cassandra Brennan: Yeah. We’re not trying to hug you all.

Audrey Tang: All right. Until next time, then. Thank you.

Cassandra Brennan: Thank you so much for your time

Stacy Wu: Thank you.

Amy Grey: Thank you so much for your time.

Cassandra Brennan: We’re so grateful.

Audrey Tang: Bye.

Stacy Wu: Bye.

Amy Grey: Bye.

ST Peng: Thank you and bye.