

With immigration reform off the agenda, some in tech turn to plan B - haydenlee
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/07/25/with-immigration-reform-off-the-agenda-some-in-tech-turn-to-plan-b/

======
SeoxyS
The O1A visa is definitely the right visa for startup founders. I think that
with a little hair-twisting and a good attorney, the current criteria for the
visa can be twisted to cover most startup founders who have some kind of a
track record.

I am by no means someone special in any way, compared to things that many
other HNers have done. But I have now received an O1A visa successfully,
twice.

I think the bigger problem with having that visa (or an H1B) is that it makes
the prospect of quitting incredibly daunting. Each time you change your job,
you have to leave the country, apply anew, risk being denied, and spend
another 10k on legal & filing fees.

~~~
graeme
What was the average legal cost for filing for an O1? I think I could meet the
criteria, but being in the US is only marginally useful for me.

I was under the impression O1 visas didn't require employment?

~~~
HistoryInAction
I have been under a mixed impression on the O-1 for a long time myself. Nikki
seems to indicate that hers at least was a work-sponsorship. However, though I
don't have a similar anecdote to point to, I understand you can do a self-
sponsorship O-1 that isn't tied to an employer.

More research is needed here.

~~~
Jare
Alex MacCaw [1] suggests that O1 requires sponsorship from a US company. My
anecdotal and outdated experience matches his description.

[1] [http://blog.sourcing.io/visa-guide](http://blog.sourcing.io/visa-guide)

------
nugget
Have rank and file developers ever tried to form any sort of association to
advocate for their own interests, which seem adverse to those of founder
types? It would seem like there are a couple hundred thousand tech types in
California alone who would prefer not to have compete with a new flood of H1B
and other visa holders. I support the type of candidates that this story is
about but my fear would be that it's a back end run by the entrenched
interests to turn a small pathway into a large one, and a couple years later
we awake to find thousands of ''exceptional'' cubical dwellers in Infosys' new
offices.

~~~
HistoryInAction
That is the exact argument against the H-1B re: "highly skilled" requirement.
Code monkeys (as distinct from devs) are a very different fish, but DC doesn't
know the difference

The counter I'd offer is that you should look through the eight criteria as
they currently stand: [http://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-
workers...](http://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-
workers/o-1-individuals-extraordinary-ability-or-achievement/o-1-visa-
individuals-extraordinary-ability-or-achievement)

If you see obvious hacks for the Infosys types that we can close off, that'd
be helpful to discuss here.

EDIT: And of course anything resembling a union is verboten among the powers
that be in Silicon Valley.

~~~
nraynaud
I was thinking along the same lines, a startup devop is a completely different
person than the person who customizes Lotus Notes or SAP for a blue chip
company.

I recently interviewed, and the guy was frightened when I told them I would
probably not be at the same company in 5 years. Nope, I work night and day,
but I'm burnt after 3 years on the same project, that's how it works. But in
those 3 years, I bring the dev team from interns to a professional state, get
a new UI out, and take some funding (well, at least I did it twice), and try
to spread some values I deem good in the team.

------
supercanuck
Why don't they just divert some of the 32,000 visas from Infosys to Startups?

I can't help but notice the inverse relationship between the number of H1-B's
sponsored and the average salary by company.

[http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2014-H1B-Visa-
Sponsor.aspx](http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2014-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx)

~~~
HistoryInAction
It'd be nice. But likely unfeasible politically either from a legislative or
regulatory perspective.

There are many problems using the H-1B even at a policy level:

-Lottery/application in April, don't become active until October

-Doesn't work well for founders despite Aug 2011 change allowing founders to arrange their board to serve as "employer": [http://www.uscis.gov/news/public-releases-topic/business-imm...](http://www.uscis.gov/news/public-releases-topic/business-immigration/uscis-initiatives-promote-startup-enterprises-and-spur-job-creation-fact-sheet)

-Difficult and long timeline to green card meaning startup failure often leads to a fast mandatory exit from the US, even if investors continue to believe in the founder

-Neufeld memo means that startup sponsors are treated at a high level of suspicion by USCIS bureaucrats, which results in an even longer, more time/money/effort intensive process compared to bigtech: [http://www.legalactioncenter.org/sites/default/files/docs/la...](http://www.legalactioncenter.org/sites/default/files/docs/lac/Neufeld_memorandum.pdf)

------
codingdave
I'm unclear on exactly what change Ohanian is proposing. Most of the changes
mentioned can already be used to apply for the visa, can't they? So what is
the actual legislative change being proposed?

Is the proposal really that YC acceptance becomes a singular criteria for
getting the visa? So YC and their peers, in effect, would have full power to
grant unlimited visas to people of their choice?

If that is what is being proposed, that sounds like a massive conflict of
interest, with potential for serious abuse, even if the intent is positive.

~~~
jedberg
> If that is what is being proposed, that sounds like a massive conflict of
> interest, with potential for serious abuse, even if the intent is positive.

Let's say for a moment, for the sake of argument, that YC decided to be
unethical and accept payment in exchange for "accepting" people to the program
to get them a visa.

1) Would it be so terrible to have people who have enough money to afford such
a bribe be in the US contributing to the economy?

2) Do you really think YC would stake their reputation on such an abuse?

3) O1A visas are often given to artists, actors and athletes. Do you think
that there isn't at least a few theater and movie production houses (usually
underfunded and desperate for cash) that are accepting the payments to list a
rich foreigner as an "actor" in their show?

In other words, I don't think this is actually a huge concern.

~~~
michaelt

      Do you really think YC would stake their reputation
      on such an abuse?
    

If they won't, Michaelt's Used Cars And Startup Incubator will accept any
company with the application fee (2% preferred stock equity and $5000 per visa
required).

Or will the government get into ranking and evaluating incubators?

~~~
HistoryInAction
Right on. The proposal had to be set up to prevent such obvious abuse.

One thought was admissions rates, since folks seemed impressed by the
soundbite that "YC had a lower admissions rate than Harvard," even leaving
aside self-selection biases in the applicant pool.

Another is a startup community-run Self Regulatory Organization (SRO) that
would get into the ranking and evaluating business a la Mattermark, with
official certification/recognition by the government.

~~~
michaelt

      One thought was admissions rates
    

At Michaelt's Used Cars And Startup Incubator, $1000 of your application fees
go on paying Mechanical Turk workers $1 a time to submit junk applications for
immediate rejection :)

~~~
HistoryInAction
Yep! I came up with that one, at least /grin You start running into various
complexity problems with further counter hacks of course :) but institutional
investors as LPs with established, credentialed due diligence processes (e.g.
CalPERS) may be a response there.

But these were all details to be worked out over the next few weeks iff the WH
was willing to move forward with these discussions. It's unclear if that's the
case, unfortunately. So we might be discussing details that were never on the
table for a broad proposal that has already been rejected on the political
merits.

------
colinsidoti
It's a bit sad that such big players are fighting for such a small,
incremental step. The number of successful founders facing immigration
problems sounds like it would be orders of magnitude smaller than the number
of potential foreign employees. Is my intuition wrong there?

I also fear that a "win" here will allow legislators to push off further
reform (e.g. "we just did something") instead of serve as a meaningful
stepping stone.

~~~
SeoxyS
That may be true, but remember; founders are much important to YC's bottom
line than the employees that those founders who become successful may or may
not hire later.

~~~
colinsidoti
Ehhh, that's pretty cynical. I don't want to blindly support YC, but this
seems fairly debatable. YC wants to give founders resources to succeed. One
necessary resource to succeed is employees. Given the current tech hiring
climate, I wouldn't be shocked if more foreign employees leads to a measurable
and significant improvement in their bottom line. I think you will need to
make a few too many assumptions to argue that one is definitively better for
their bottom line.

Perhaps one appeal of this approach, though, is that this effort aligns better
with legislator's "bottom line" \- if you look at their bottom line as job
creation.

~~~
x0x0
So for a rather refreshing change, tech employers should be honest. There is
zero engineering shortage; instead, they want to use h1bs to drive down the
prevailing wages. There are also plenty of very skilled mid-career engineers
who have left the valley for the midwest because of the better net financial
situation when a starter home doesn't cost $1.1m. If valley employers paid
better, or got their shit together and pushed the governments here to allow
affordable housing, they'd have plenty of engineers available.

~~~
keerthiko
I do believe talking about H1Bs for employees (non-founders) and its effect of
driving down prevailing wages is somewhat off-topic.

I myself am an Indian citizen. I studied in Boston, moved to California with
an upperclassman and started a company during my OPT. The company is fairly
well-rooted while bootstrapped, but doesn't have massive funding in place yet.
Towards the end of my OPT, I tried to apply for the H1B just because I wanted
to continue working on the company I started, and because I'd come to call
California home.

Are you suggesting my team find an American engineer of equal skill take my
place in the tiny company I started for the no-salary I was earning, as
cofounder? I'm confused.

As it stands I didn't get through the H1B lottery two years in a row, and am
now pursuing this O1A visa, although this being my first startup (and job) out
of college my track record is a bit sparse.

~~~
x0x0
h1b is flat on topic: see comments below. The act of legislating is trading
between competing interests; various people are attempting to use startups as
a whole to get self-serving visa changes with zero to negative benefits to the
majority of the members of the startup community: non-founders.

On to you: your situation is the exception to the common use of h1bs. You're
probably a giant minority. The common use as far as I know of h1bs is to hold
down wages of engineering. Microsoft and yahoo laying off engineers while
simultaneously applying for h1b visas trivially demonstrates the lie in the
"engineer shortage" nonsense.

Employee friendly changes to h1b visas could include many things: removing the
tie between the sponsoring company and the employee (so if he or she is
underpaid he or she can easily switch jobs); or aggressive investigation of
prevailing wage requirements (oops there goes Infosys' business model); or 5+
year bans on h1b applications post layoffs. But bluntly, I think we have more
than enough visas already. I'd change my mind if I saw engineering wages rise,
concerted action on the part of ceos to help control housing costs, and
concerted action on the part of ceos to help fix US education and increase the
domestic engineering pipeline; or concerted action on the part of ceos to
police visa fraud (see infosys, or epic systems, etc).

~~~
keerthiko
Theoretically, the H1B application requires evidence that the employee is
receiving market-standard pay for the role fulfilled. However, there's a
gradual effect over time of course when there's a lot of expats who are
willing to work at the lower bound of that pay. So Re: H1B, I pretty much
agree with you, and I think immigrant employee visas need to be restructured
to really punish the Wipros/Infosys' that just import manslaves that are fed
change to output code, lowering the average engineer's pay.

I was raising the point regarding my position because that seemed to be the
thesis of the article -- for people more in my position than for employees of
companies on the scale of Microsoft, etc. We are not entering the US with the
objective of taking other people's jobs. The only reason I applied for the H1B
was because it was the legit path with the most reasonable chance to get
cleared. I think it's the wrong kind of visa for a founder to attempt to get,
there just isn't a better one.

So YC and people like me are hoping for a visa similar to the O1A, except
right now that is expensive to file, vague in the conditions that need to be
cleared, and usually needs you to foot a fat lawyer bill too. And it's a bit
of a stretch to be applied to founders. Essentially, the existing visas are
all hardly different from 10-15 (or more) years ago, times have changed, and
the government has done nothing to accommodate the changes in the economy.

~~~
x0x0
yeah, but we both know that evidence is farcical. Epic System's practices are
pretty well documented. And just this week, I was hit up by a recruiter
looking to pay "up to 120k" for a data scientist with 4-7 years experience,
ms/phd, and experience with hadoop and large-scale stochastic optimization.
It's not hard to figure out why someone's paying for a recruiter to try to
fill a job with a stupid low salary.

Refusing to support companies asking for friendly visa changes for free is
employees' best bet at getting said companies to support employee-friendly
changes.

------
rurban
Indeed. I'm a H1-B visa holder, with exceptional wages, and my wife is not
allowed to work here. Ok, so she finished her Ph.D in the 3 years here.

But with all this new visa drama going on, no updates in the visa extension
process so far, and the broken promise that spouses will be able to work, I
just told my company that I'll have to go back to Germany and work remote from
there.

Plan B. But the benefit is that I will be able to live in a democratic country
again, with a much better standard of living. It's only 7 hours and I worked
remote for a couple of US companies before.

If companies need those foreigners why should the government on behalf of the
unions intervene? Do they know better than the companies which is good for
them?

~~~
HistoryInAction
It seems extremely likely that the H-4 spouse EAD (work authorization) change
has just been enacted:
[http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=USCIS-2010-001...](http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=USCIS-2010-0017-0001)

It was proposed by the Department of Homeland Security in May, went through a
90 day public comment period, which is now closed. We're waiting for the
official announcement.

------
rmason
We definitely need to get more creative with visas. Gov. Snyder here in
Michigan has proposed in a meeting with President Obama that he help create
50,000 visas over five years for immigrants willing to live in Detroit. They
would either have advanced degrees or exceptional ability in certain fields.

[http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20140123/NEWS/140129933...](http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20140123/NEWS/140129933/snyder-
seeks-50000-work-visas-to-lure-immigrants-to-detroit)

With 700,000 people living in a city that used to hold over two million
there's plenty of room.

~~~
bilbo0s
The main problem with that scheme is that it is designed to channel people to
where he and the President WANT them...

as opposed to where the United States NEEDS them. I think we should give out
visas to Masters and PhDs and allow those people to go where they please. That
way... we would get the best people as well... not just the most desperate.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
From a 'rate of employment in the population' perspective surely you don't
want people immigrating who will replace native workers (or indeed any worker
currently in post)?

What's the benefit to the country if a new worker from abroad replaces a
current worker but at a lower wage if that means the person 'usurped' needs
state assistance or becomes under-employed (and bumps someone else from work
to benefit-reliance)? Sure business owners probably benefit but such benefit
seems pretty localised.

How about if you let a lot of foreign workers come in who are well skilled and
they flood a field in such a way that no students leaving college in that
field can get a job. The incoming worker likely can accept lower wages which
local [likely] debt-laden students can't. The field falls flat - the local
population stop training in that field and you've either got a future skill
crisis or a long-term reliance on immigrant workers.

If you want to preference native/endemic population over immigrants at all
then I think you need to be very specific in the immigration you allow.

------
bubbleRefuge
How about re-purposing H1s issued to the sweatshop Indian firms ( which
generally bring in the cheap labor) to tech companies and startups. That is
probably tens of thousands of visas right there.

~~~
HistoryInAction
Definitely. Unfortunately, that would either require legislation (and
something similar has been proposed for a bit by Sens. Grassley (R-IA) and
Durbin (D-IL)) or a very contentious regulatory process.

Needless to say, the Infosys and Tatas of the world do have a highly developed
lobbying arm. As one example of a supportive research group:
[http://www.offshoreinsights.com/](http://www.offshoreinsights.com/)

Startups don't have anything like this, and the tech companies don't want to
rock the boat with their outsourcing partners.

To learn more, look at the Hatch amendment to S744 (comprehensive immigration
reform):
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/05/22/hatch_amendme...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/05/22/hatch_amendment_h1_b_compromise_is_great_news_for_immigration_reform.html)

~~~
bubbleRefuge
Can't some form of executive action be taken ? Perhaps enforce the H1 rules
closer to the vest. The body shops are so bad. They force many of the onshore
resources to work full-time then another 3 hours on nights + weekends to feed
work to their offshore cohorts so that they can bill out the offshore guys
which is where they have even better margins.

~~~
HistoryInAction
I'd defer to someone like Professors Norm Matloff or Ron Hira on this
question.

Honestly, I've spent so long trying to keep startup visa out of the H-1B
debate that I'm just not that familiar with it.

I don't disagree with you, but I don't have a sense of the political landscape
to give you an answer that isn't a pure guess.

------
refurb
I like the idea of linking a work via to a person who has been able to raise
money. I mean, why the hell would you _not_ want that person to stay in the
US?

One concern might be the ability to game the system, but I think with the
right parameters that could be minimized.

------
pclark
good attorneys are actually doing all the things discussed in this article for
the O1

~~~
HistoryInAction
Yep! But what attracted us to this change was that the prep time those good
attorneys required has been highly variable. If you have a lot of old media
coverage, it could be a 1 month prep time + 2 weeks DC adjudication. If not,
it could be an 8 month prep time + 2 weeks DC adjudication.

The goal of expanding the criteria definitions to more broadly mesh up with
the lifecycle of successful startups and linking in the investor signal
parameter into the review process will be to change that curve to be much more
bunched up against the 1 month bins.

And yes, part of our argument was that startup founders /are/ doing all of
these things already. Just it takes time that kills startups, and startups are
also doing a lot of extraneous work (e.g. chasing NYT coverage when more TC or
re/code coverage is what's needed to get another wave of early adopters or
investor interest for that next round's buzz) to qualify for the visa when
they should instead be focusing on product and traction.

------
pteredactyl
What, like hiring and training Americans?

------
dang
The submitted title ("YC's Startup Visa Plan B") was editorialized. That's
against the HN guidelines.

