

Startup Visa D.O.A., and Startup America Just a Giant Press Release? - joshbert
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/30/startup-visa-d-o-a-and-startup-america-just-a-giant-press-release/

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kul
I sent my immigration lawyer a link to
[http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/14/finally-a-startup-visa-
that...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/14/finally-a-startup-visa-that-works/)
about 2 weeks ago and this was his response:

"Kulveer, from his lips to God's ears. Frankly, I don't see it
happening...such is the gridlock in Congress, where immigration issues, any
immigration issues, even sensible solutions to obvious problems like this one,
tend to be held hostage to a mindset of 'once you've secured the southern
border, we can talk - until then, don't bring us immigration issues to vote
on'. The need is obvious, the solution good, but the environment fractured and
hostile to the degree that makes those normal attributes of legislation not
enough to see it through. No-one will be more pleased than me if I'm wrong!"

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rkischuk
The most unfortunate part of this is that 'the President would only support
the Startup Visa in the context of “comprehensive immigration reform”.'

If it is valuable to attract and retain the top entrepreneurial talent from
around the world, we should enact that policy ASAP, without holding it captive
to the political grenade of illegal immigration.

~~~
aphexairlines
Or maybe not everyone has the same priorities as you. When I was living in the
US, my top priority was comprehensive immigration reform so my fiance could
have the right to work so we could live a normal life.

~~~
ericd
What is good for the country and good for us as individuals in the short term
doesn't always line up. For a country to work well, one needs to look beyond
his own needs. I think that immigration needs to be revamped, but it's a huge
task, and it doesn't make sense to logjam all related issues.

The parent's point about political sensitivity is very important - it makes it
much, much less likely to happen in the near future, and it doesn't improve
the situation of that other bill very much. It's just not a strong enough
motivator politically, because there aren't many voters in the startup
community.

This is a strictly worse outcome, regardless of your priorities, unless your
goal is to keep highly educated foreigners from staying.

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kprobst
Business as usual in Washington. Anyone really surprised? Every time it looks
like something good will come out of there, the politicians manage to screw it
up with amazing precision and panache.

~~~
StavrosK
I can't believe you guys haven't figured it out yet. Who cares about startups?
If you want this to get passed, just call it the Patriot Visa.

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xiaoma
This piece doesn't make much sense to me. The first paragraph talked about how
Obama is interested in emulating China's and India's focus on science and
engineering. The second paragraph says the Startup America plan needs more
substance: a way for foreign-born entrepreneurs to start companies here and a
leveling of the playing field for entrepreneurs wanting to solve government
problems.

I don't know about the situation in India, but here in China the barriers for
foreign-born entrepreneurs starting companies and the barriers for
entrepreneurs wanting to solve government problems are both very high. The US
already has the comparative advantage in this regard. Isn't the real
disadvantage that most Americans aren't very interested in science or
engineering careers?

~~~
chengyinliu
What he meant was that if those foreign entrepreneur could not stay in the US,
they will go back to their own country to create jobs there. Therefore, the US
would lose this entrepreneur along with the technology and the job he/she
creates.

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Stratego
If governments have to aggregate bills together because they are incapable of
considering individual ones, do you really expect them to ever produce well-
rounded pieces of legislation?

Looks like government can't scale.

~~~
nhebb
My cynical take is that sometimes these things are packaged together, knowing
they will fail, just so one party can use it as a negative campaigning tool in
the next election: "Party X voted against <insert topic>"

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gamble
From the end:

> There is not one example of a Government-sponsored tech cluster—anywhere in
> the world—that has worked. Yet our leaders talks about clusters as if they
> are the secret sauce for entrepreneurship.

Because startups are not real beneficiaries of tech cluster funding. These
office parks end up filled with call centers and branch offices of large
companies like IBM and Dell. They're effectively another subsidy for
established firms with political influence.

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BerislavLopac
An advice to all Silicon Valley investors: get up off your asses and look
elsewhere. Europe is especially teeming with great startups to fund.

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afinlayson
Wow, this is such a disappointment, I hope the people who screwed this up have
as hard of jobs keeping their job as those of us trying to actually help this
country by creating jobs.

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sstone
Is there a way to hack the political process to get this moving ? Can
individual states bypass the federal government with some kind of visa ? Some
law that this can piggyback on ?

~~~
jforman
No, individual states cannot issue visas. The border is controlled by the
federal government (specifically, the Department of Homeland Security).

One thing you can do is sign up for votizen and send a message to your
representatives here, however:

<https://www.votizen.com/issues/startupvisa/>

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bigwally
Unfortunately the startup visa is dead and will stay dead for some time. The
only way something like this will get through is by piggybacking it onto some
other bill.

