

Have 4 minutes to help startup visa? - OJKoukaz
https://sites.google.com/site/iamelgringo/have-4-mintues-to-help-startup-visa

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psychotik
Please take a few minutes to do this. If you need a first-hand non-sentimental
story with a possible solution, here's mine:
[http://crazyviraj.blogspot.com/2011/06/capitalistic-fix-
for-...](http://crazyviraj.blogspot.com/2011/06/capitalistic-fix-for-
americans-broken.html)

~~~
HistoryInAction
Viraj, encourage you to look at this piece of legislation which may affect
your wait time:
[http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/52799052-90/chaffetz-b...](http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/52799052-90/chaffetz-
bill-legislation-immigration.html.csp)

Thanks for sharing!

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brackin
As a foreign (British) entrepreneur looking to make the move next year I
appreciate both this movement and those in the US pushing this. I don't see
why this hasn't passed yet. Especially because this is beneficial for the US
economy.

~~~
HistoryInAction
Left and right politics in DC. Left wants low-skilled immigration reform.
Right wants high-skilled immigration reform. Result is gridlock.

We're trying to thread a thin needle.

~~~
dotBen
I'd have to respectfully disagree, or at least suggest the situation is a lot
more nuanced than that.

Dems (well, Obama) 'clarified' _(read: changed the law slightly in a way that
didn't need new legislation)_ the USCIS guidelines for self-sponsored H1Bs for
startup founders and also the requirements for EB2 visas for entrepreneurs.
They've also been very attentive to the Startup Visa movement.

The GOP continue to pursue a blocking stance across the board on all
legislation in Congress _(essentially as a punitive measure for electing
Barack Obama)_ and they don't seem willing to support any real immigration
reform - high or low skilled - that I can see.

~~~
HistoryInAction
Hell, I'll respectfully disagree with me that there's nuance :) But from a
first-order analysis perspective, that's it. I didn't think this was the
audience to go much farther beyond that.

However, if you want more...

The Obama administration was the same administration that advanced the Neufeld
memo in 2010 strictly restricting H1-B to founders by making the 'employer
work certification' a hard requirement. With the H1-B/EB-2 and EB-5
liberalization this past August, the Neufeld memo is all but overturned, but
it could come back at any time, which is why we need Startup Visa legislation.
All the same, the big positive in that the Obama administration is willing to
consider it a jobs bill and not an immigration bill, which we've got from
Valerie Jarrett after sending a briefing off to the White House.

The administration been pretty attentive to Startup Visa (Facebook and Twitter
town hall mentions and vague reference in the El Paso immigration reform
speech in May), but the lack of mention in the LinkedIn speech last month
pissed off Conway and has made it much harder to pull in VC attention since.
Conway's now focusing his time and effort on the Ed Lee campaign for SF Mayor,
such as with the 2Legit 2Quit video.

However, Senate Dems, specifically Sen. Menendez of NJ, are much more hard
line on the "nothing but comprehensive immigration reform" than the President.
While we have the support of 6 Senate Dems—lead sponsors being John Kerry and
moderate Republican Richard Lugar of Indiana—we haven't yet come up with any
strategy to overcome the comprehensive roadblock.

The Chamber of Commerce and Bloomberg administration has 'nudged' the
Republican position sufficiently that rumbles are coming out that horribly
anti-immigration Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith is said to be putting together
an extremely watered down STEM green cards bill:
[http://www.vdare.com/articles/national-data-by-edwin-s-
ruben...](http://www.vdare.com/articles/national-data-by-edwin-s-rubenstein-
why-more-immigrant-science-technology-engineering-math-)

Interestingly, Utah is also a big driver of high-skilled immigration reform,
according to friends in the Bloomberg administration. Rep. Chaffetz's bill
rebalancing H1-B visas to change the flat per-country % changing the status
quo of China and Luxembourg having the same number of H1-Bs available is
advancing with Smith's support. It has just passed Smith's Judiciary Committee
and awaits action on the House floor: <http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-
bin/bdquery/z?d112:HR03012:@@@C>

Finally, also note the Obama administration's recent effort to set up a 'Tiger
Team' or Skunkworks to cut through red tape in USCIS to make more
administrative changes to make the immigration process easier:
[http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f...](http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=bd537158910e2310VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=68439c7755cb9010VgnVCM10000045f3d6a1RCRD)

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Acen
As someone moving from New Zealand all the way to the states for my business,
I'm just starting my research on visas. What's the problem you guys are
actually trying to tackle?

~~~
untog
I'm a British national in NYC right now on an H1B visa. It locks me down to
one employer, and the process for transferring the visa between employers is
an absolute nightmare (that I am currently in the middle of).

I'm very happy at my startup employer, but you can't be surrounded by startup
culture without wanting to do it for yourself. I've got tech skills, ideas and
business-minded friends and a couple of potential investors- but I can't act
on any of this because I can't start and work for my own company.

So, I'm here for now. But I don't see a career path ahead of me, just a ton of
dead ends. So as it stands right now, if I ever want to get serious about an
idea I'll have to take it to London. Arguably, that's not in my interests
(I'll have to rebuild a network from scratch) and it's not in the interests of
the US for me to leave.

The Startup Visa would allow me to form my own company, work for it and hire
local employees. Maybe I'm biased, but it seems like a win-win to me.

~~~
kokey
I'm a foreigner in the UK on the UK equivalent of an H1B visa (the tier 2
killed migrant visa). I'm also tied to my employer, though it's a consultancy
and I'm based at different clients on different projects so it doesn't get too
dull. That said, I'm also frustrated that I can't start a business here. There
is an entrepreneur visa, but you need either £250,000 of cash that's under
your control (no loans) or £50,000 from a UK based VC, and even with that it's
not easy to get.

I doubt, politically, that it will become easier to get startup visas in the
US and the UK. People actually don't want entrepeneurs from foreign cultures
in their country. They don't want people from the Middle East and Asia open
restaurants, take-aways, tailors, mechanics and other small businesses that
employ them and their relatives. They don't want these people to have
lifestyle businesses. People are racist and xenophobic. This is why they set
the bar either high, so it's someone who will set up a large business that is
likely to employ a lot of local people (or pay a lot of taxes) or they limit
it to VC funded companies since these invest in certain more desirable types
of businesses from a cultural perspective, like hi-tech.

~~~
mattmanser
It's not racist or xenophobic to give priority to your own citizens over
others. We're not racists or xenophobes just because our great-great-great-
great-grandparents did a better job at setting up a country than yours. We're
not obliged to fix the world just for you, we just want to live our own lives.
Our unemployment is high enough to need to give priority to the children of
the people who paid for it all, because that was the promise of the struggle.

Start a business in your own country. If it's such a crap country, work on
fixing it for the next generation. That responsibility's fallen to your
generation, stop moaning and stand up.

~~~
rglullis
>> We're not racists or xenophobes just because (...)

Still xenophobic, though. I've lost count of how many strawmen you raised
here:

\- No one is asking for you to "fix the world" for me or other immigrants.
Like you, I just want "live my own life", without having to be artificially
tied to one piece of land.

\- Who says that immigrants do not pay taxes? They pay just like you, and one
could argue that they are actually subsidizing _your_ welfare. Undocumented
immigrants with jobs pay taxes like everyone else, yet they are not eligible
for benefits. For example, I paid two years of Social Security here, and there
is _zero chance_ that I will see this money back.

\- Skilled immigrants are more likely to _solve_ the problem of unemployment
in your country. "They are taking our jobs" is a ridiculous fallacy.

~~~
mattmanser
_Xenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or
of that which is foreign or strange_

Don't ever call someone you don't know a xenophobe, you know absolutely
nothing about me. I fear UK white trash more than I ever have johnny
foreigner.

To be clear, I'd be deeply hurt and insulted by this, but you don't actually
seem to know what it means.

From the BBC:

 _The unemployment total for 16-24 year olds hit a record high of 991,000 in
the quarter, a jobless rate of 21.3%._

They are the ones our government should be caring about, not you. Sorry. It's
just that there aren't enough opportunities to go around and in the end a
Government should be helping its citizens, not someone else's.

That's the point of them.

The original comment I replied to is calling his hosts vile names, as you are,
just because you can't get that you're not entitled to anything in this world.
You've been given an opportunity in this country and just because our citizens
are naturally prioritized over you, why are you complaining and throwing
names?

My point about taxes is that your _parents_ didn't pay any. Do you think all
this infrastructure appeared yesterday? All this case law was invented last
week? That the freedoms afforded were given willingly by kings or queens? It's
all been invested in generation to generation. All those unemployed kids?
Their parents worked here, paying towards a future for their children. An
unwritten contract of pay it forward. Go back a generation or two and you find
parents dying, blood, fear, struggle to give their children and their
childrens children this opportunity. To ask the Government to give the same
opportunities to someone who just turned up is naive at best.

Calling them racists or xenophobes? Total lies and totally out of order.
Britain is a liberal and tolerant country compared to many I've been to. There
are bad eggs, no denying that, but we're one of the most progressive countries
in the world.

I fully admit our forefathers are to thank for this and I feel very lucky to
have had the random luck to have been born here, but on the other hand your
totally unrealistic sense of entitlement doesn't make everyone else a
xenophobe or a racist.

Xenophobia and racism are specific, vile states of mind. Every country in the
world prioritizes their citizens. Twisting those words to mean that is,
frankly, pathetic.

~~~
rglullis
It may not be conscious for you, but until you are dividing things between
"your country" and "someone else's", I will consider your statements
xenophobic. We are both in agreement about honoring one social contract, the
main difference is that you don't think that others should have any choice of
which contract to establish in the first place.

Also, it strikes me as odd for you to defend all the progress made by your
ancestors in bringing freedom to people, but not realizing that there is more
that could be done. My "complaining and throwing names" about immigration law
today would be equivalent to your ancestors complaining about them being
exploited by some feudal lord.

More importantly, you don't realize that isolating people based on their
country of origin (instead of their potential to contribute to society) is the
opposite of progress.

You may think that Britain is one of the most progressive countries, but oddly
it has been surpassed in many indicators of quality of life by Canada and
Australia. These countries have far saner immigration policies. What's
stopping your generation to try to bring this level of progress to Britain?
The unwritten contract of "pay it forward" also applies to you, doesn't it?

I'm sorry if you feel offended by any of what I said, I just wish there was a
way to disabuse the notion that "country of birth" is some valid parameter to
assess an individual. It _could_ have been true a couple of generations ago,
but the world of today can (and should) get away from these physical barriers.

P.S: I just realized my bad wording on the original comment. I'm not in the US
as an undocumented immigrant. I wanted to say that even being in the US with a
H1B visa, I still will not get access to what I paid to Social Security.

~~~
mattmanser
Please invent another word. That's not the meaning of xenophobic.

If you gave every single person a choice over which social contract they could
choose do you think they'd all be living in Iran, the Congo or the US? Do you
think the US could cope with 5 or 6 billion people living there? Or
Switzerland or whoever's topping the quality of life list atm.

You're calling people xenophobic because you want the US or the UK to suddenly
turn into a meritocracy, but not a real one where we kick out the failures out
and let more deserving in. No just the one where you get let in but most other
people don't.

But you're not xenophobic or racist? Because it's based on a criteria of merit
that you qualify for but the starving child in Africa doesn't.

Is that hypocrisy?

The world today _can't_ get away from those physical barriers. There's not
enough money in the world to pay for the UK's social security system for every
person in the world. A worldwide NHS? A dream many years from being realised.
There's not enough schools spaces in the world for every child. There's not
enough houses or roads or cars or yachts or lear jets or iPhones or big screen
TVs to go around.

We're nowhere near that point, not even vaguely close. There's not enough. And
you're complaining that you've almost managed to break through to the top 5%
but they won't let you be a full member of the club. And by Jove you deserve
it, and the guy who got me riled in the first place deserves it because you
say so. There's enough for _you_ , but only if they let that magical door open
a teeny-tiny bit more.

I was lucky in my birth, you were almost as lucky as you've obviously landed
on your feet. You got opportunities denied to most of the world. I got, and
probably wasted, more. But are either of us xenophobes for benefiting from
that luck or wanting to keep that situation for ourselves and our families?

Step back and reflect, really reflect if your desire for this 'sane'
immigration isn't totally selfish. Why are you deserving more than any other
being on the planet? Because you ticked some boxes? Passed some exams? Dream
of starting a business? And why should I even be allowed to stay in the UK?

~~~
rglullis
The term "xenophobic" might be overloaded, much the same way that "homophobic"
is. You don't need to actively hate homosexuals to actually hold homophobic
views. I still stand by the point that discriminating someone based on their
nationality or citizenship is holding a xenophobic point of view. But let's
agree that the term might be confusing.

 _> >If you gave every single person a choice (...) they'd all be living in
Iran, the Congo or the US?_

As if the only thing to factor in when choosing where to live is the "social
contract". There are many people that are allowed to live in Canada and
Australia, and yet they don't.

You'd be surprised by how averse to change most people are. Even in places
where people have more opportunities to come and go, they still prefer to stay
where they are over risking for better opportunities elsewhere. Not all
Americans from flyover states want to move out, no matter how bad the
environment might be. The same applies to Europeans in the EU, or South
Americans in the Mercosul.

 _> > (...) There's not enough money in the world to pay for the UK's social
security system for every person in the world(...)_

I can see that we hold many different values about other things, and these
might be contaminating the main topic of discussion. I don't want "government
benefits". What I want is "free flow of people and services, so that they
don't grow up to be dependent on these government benefits in the first
place".

 _> > Why are you deserving more than any other being on the planet?_

I am not more deserving to anything, neither I am any _less_ deserving to
anything.

 _> > And why should I even be allowed to stay in the UK?_

Why _shouldn't_ you? Are you dangerous? Are you denying someone to their
freedoms? It doesn't seem to be the case.

In my value system, you should be allowed to stay _anywhere_ where your
presence (or your actions) do not cause direct harm to society. In yours, the
country of origin takes precedence over the individual.

~~~
kokey
To me the irony of this argument is that my ancestors were European, I have
already spent well over £150k on taxes in the UK, and the business I would
like to start would be employing 19-24 year olds.

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jisaacstone
I have a number of visa complaints, but they have nothing to do with start-
ups.

Fiancee visa:

{% for profanity in all_profanities %} {{ profanity }} USCIS {% endfor %}

I feel better now.

~~~
HistoryInAction
I'm not sure how you could apply a greased weasel to USCIS, but I'm sure they
would not appreciate it.

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coryl
Canadian here, your help is appreciated!

~~~
thomasgerbe
As a Canadian, I have to say it's not very hard for Canadians to get VISAs in
the U.S.

~~~
coryl
If you're technical, yeah. Always tons of demand for engineers. But if you're
not a software engineer, much harder I believe.

~~~
URSpider94
You don't have to be a software engineer, or even technical, you just have to
be a "professional".

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dlss
Okay, a bit off topic, but I'm hoping I wasn't the only one who clicked this
title after sight reading "Have 4 minutes to help startup vista?"

~~~
snkashis
or "Have 4 Mintues to Help startup Visa?"

