Time For A Startup Founder Visa
from the let-'em-in! dept
In our various debates about immigration policy in the US, we here have always been in favor of a much more permissive immigration policy for skilled immigrants, noting that skilled immigrants have been shown to create more jobs rather than "take them away." For some reason, too many folks incorrectly think that jobs are a zero-sum game, and if a foreigner takes a job, it means one fewer job for Americans. That's wrong in so many ways that it's difficult to take seriously anyone who makes such a claim. That said, it would be interesting to see what even those opposed to expansions of existing skilled worker immigration plans think about Paul Graham's new suggestion of a special startup founder visa, that would allow 10,000 immigrants into the country, but only if they're starting their own company. Thus, they wouldn't be "taking" anyone else's job, since the job they'd be creating wouldn't exist otherwise -- they'd be creating it from scratch. Such a visa would encourage more entrepreneurial activity, and create more startups that should (in all likelihood) end up creating a lot of new jobs as well -- including a few that might go to those people whining about foreigners "stealing" their jobs...Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: immigration, startups, visas
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Maybe we'd even see bailout money for non-competitive American owned businesses.
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Customs and Immigration has a provision for investors called EB-5 who are starting a US-based business hiring at least ten US citizens. No new laws required either, just file an I-526 and then an I-485. See this link for more info.
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Having spent all my professional life in tech I can definitely agree with Mike here; technology is not a zero-sum game. Even when immigrants leave the US after learning some whiz-bang technology, they then can take that technology to start up some new concern that starts trading with US companies adding again to the entire system. I've seen it more than once. Trade is good, knowledge is good, technology is good, wherever it comes from or goes to. Its a hell of alot better than exporting war and fear. Christ allmighty, we've been doing plenty of that and where's it gotten us??
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Uh... requiring you to hire 10 American citizens is not the same thing as doing a startup. That's a huge burden for someone doing a startup.
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Especially if that "startup" is really just someone being hired as a "contractor" by an employer to replace a now ex-employee.
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And how many people do you think you need to do a startup? I guess you've done that many startups to know, right?
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Re: how many people are in a startup
Also see W.E.Peterson's "Almost Perfect", http://www.wordplace.com/ap/index.shtml: chapter two narrates how SSI, the startup that later became WordPerfect Corp. started with zero full-time employees (just the founders and some part-time contractors) and an initial investment of $7,000 (actually a loan to the company from one of the founders, who was soon able to get repaid from the company's organic cashflow).
These, Google's and SSI's, are TYPICAL stories for hi-tech startups (as is, for example, Hewlett-Packard's, see http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/histnfacts/timeline/hist_30s.html: initial investment $538, initial employees two [they're _counting_ the two founders]) and show well how such startups at their beginnings just don't come even CLOSE to meeting the "million dollars, 10 full-time employees (beyond the foreign founders)" required by EB-5.
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Re: EB-5 visa requires a million-$ investment
So, in short, it is absurd to claim that EB-5 can in any way substitute for Dr. Graham's proposal.
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The real problem with these programs is the way companies have been allowed to abuse them. In this case I am guessing most of these "small businesses" will be people setting them up as "private contractors" who will take job from existing workers and free up company payrolls.
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Yeah it seems to me Mike is responding to some silly "talk radio" straw man argument here. The real policy thinkers I have heard criticize the exploitation of this system really seem to fear more the lowering of the overall value of a particular skill-set or degree (and the domestic implications of such). When companies say they can’t find any phDs or EEs in United the States, what they are really saying is they can find them cheaper elsewhere. The real argument isn’t so much about the "they took our jobs" populist crap vacuous politicians use to stir up there less intellectually inclined voters and more about reducing the general compensation rate (and there by the payoff for expensive education and training = these degrees don’t pay as much = less people bother to pursue them in United States = (repeat cycle)) in certain fields.
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It may not always be the case but does in fact happen quite a bit in the tech industry. Many companies abuse the 'skilled' workers visa to lower cost of wages, regardless of the prevailing wages criteria. It is hard for those of us in the IT industry to understand how 400k tech jobs have been eliminated in the past year yet employers still need to import foreigners to fill jobs requiring those same skill sets.
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Foreigners work harder.
Foreigners are smarter and more qualified.
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I have nothing against foreign workers, I have something against scum bags like you that would rather hire cheap help(qualified or unqalified) just to save a buck. If the foreign worker has a better resume and is more qualified, then yes he/she should be hired... but if the only reason you are using this individual, no matter what the qualifications, is that theya re cheaper. The company, like you scum bag. Is a fool
Why don't you fucking just move to another nation you cock sucking scum bag.
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It's true Americans are expensive but so are Cadillacs, Ivy League educations, Apple computers and anything else that is a premium good in the market place.
I've met many hard working foreigners but I've met a whole lot more hard working Americans.
There are smarter and more qualified foreigners just as there are Americans who are smarter and more qualified than foreign workers it just depends on what perspective you choose to look at the issue from.
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In the short term I believe this is true. Especially for jobs that requires education. But I've also seen that out-sourcing is only so good. When I was working as a contractor my bread and butter was adult websites that out-sourced their hosting and main programming. Sure, the tech-saavy was outsourced. But they still required my services for the special tweak or really cool widget idea they might have had. These owner-operators often cursed the off-shore talent for messing up simple tasks or blowing cultural queues. You still have to pay for quality, and these offshore programming mills usually couldn't provide it.
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If you grew up in America and went to American schools and now your married to an American wife and you have American kids to raise and an American mortgage to pay then the original pay was certainly not too high.
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I do, however, know people who oppose illegal immigration, and there is an argument that illegal immigrants "take our jobs" because when they work under the table, they're not on the same playing field. When a skilled worker is taking a job for cash with no taxes and paperwork (and even for less than minimum wage), he quite possibly is taking that job away from someone willing to do that job by the book.
Beyond that, I don't know what argument is being knocked down, and I agree with Mike past that.
If an immigrant is on a work visa now, how easy is it for him to start his own business? This may be less about keeping people from "taking our jobs" and more about fixing a flaw in the system.
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Heh. You should read the comments on these posts. Illegal immigration is a totally different subject.
There are MANY MANY people opposed to things like the H1B program which is only for skilled immigrants in the tech and sciences field.
That program is often abused, and we should be focused on the abuses, but people who are against it claim that it takes away American jobs, ignoring how it often actually creates more jobs.
The illegal immigration subject is entirely different. Just do a search on H1Bs and see how many "they're taking our jobs!" stories you'll find -- none of which have anything to do with illegal immigration.
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I have never heard any proposal for "fixing the flaw in the system" by allowing the H1B visa holder to keep working in the US _without_ a sponsoring employer, and it's not clear what such a fix might be, except something along the lines of Dr. Graham's proposal (visas specifically for startup founders, or extension of H1B criteria from highly qualified employees with a sponsoring employer to cover also startup founders with a sponsoring capitalist among Dr. Graham's proposed roster of "qualified venture capital investors").
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"there is an argument that illegal immigrants "take our jobs" because when they work under the table, they're not on the same playing field. When a skilled worker is taking a job for cash with no taxes and paperwork (and even for less than minimum wage), he quite possibly is taking that job away from someone willing to do that job by the book."
Same thing, different words
"there is an argument that illegal immigrants "take our jobs" because when än American citezen illegally hies an immigrant, they're not on the same playing field. When a American employer gives a job for cash with no taxes and paperwork (and even for less than minimum wage), he quite possibly is taking that job away from someone willing to do that job by the book. But he then has to pay taxes and who want that?"
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freaking idiots
Paul Graham is an idiot
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Brit
He moved to Spain instead where he now has around 20 people working for him.
He'd love to move to America but his business isn't really the sort where it would make sense to open another branch nor would he be able to hire a large amount of workers straight away. Such a visa would be a real bonus to America and definately attract the right kind of people.
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Re: 3rd world labor
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They took are jobs!
As for the foreigners taking jobs: I do consulting work as a trouble shooter in the IT industry. My bread and butter is being parachuted in at the end of a project that was done by off shore firms or H1B contractors and fix what they got wrong. It's not that the non-locals are bad programmers - far from it, some are outstanding. It's mostly documentation, communication, and management problems. Many managers forget that the bulk of a software project is analysis, documentation, and testing, not coding. I hope companies do not realize that H1B workers and off-shore projects are false savings and just push even greater costs onto the back end of an IT project when they start to fail. It would cost me a large amount of business.
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We already have one of these....
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And while I don't claim that ALL foreign hires take away jobs from Americans, there are LOTS and LOTS that, in fact, do. I've heard plenty of stories about companies, especially tech companies, that lay off most or all of their American work force and hire workers in India to take their place, because they work for peanuts. Foreign workers are fine and even necessary in some situations, but the privilege is being highly abused, and it needs to stop. Between buying tons and tons of foreign goods (mostly from China), hiring tons of foreign workers, and stuffing the already-exploding wallets of the Arabs with all the oil, it's no wonder America is flat broke. I see lots and lots and lots of money going out of the country, and not nearly enough coming back in.
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Skilled Immigrants
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its not about the jobs that are lost it is about the dilution of wages
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Missing the point
Wait until a population explosion hits your town and the children of the immigrants grow up. Think they work in the fields?
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Founder Visas
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Lord of the Visa - check this out (funny)
Thanks for doing up this post. We created a comedy (but totally serious) about the Startup Visa - We call it "Lord of the Visa." (from Lord of the Rings)
Looks like you're an Elf! Hooray!
http://blog.vidli.com/startup-visa/
Enjoy...
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Leaving MSFT to do a startup in India
No complaints though ; my 2.5 year stay in the US has been a great one - got to meet wonderful people and learn a lot.
Many other Indian guys are doing this too . How do people fo a startup here ? I guess its through some VC or University Incubator - anything for those of us spending our own money (which is generally a smaller amount ) ?
*Can't disclose my name because I've yet to resign officially.
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