Visas for Foreign Entrepreneurs

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_12/b4171027577226.htm

by kilian • 16 years ago

47 47 16 years ago

businessweek.com

exit• 16 years ago

what would happen if anyone were allowed to live and work anywhere?

fierarul• 16 years ago

World government ?

pp3• 16 years ago

I wonder about this, too. I mean, it's funny how people have all these rights including freedom of movement and residence, but only within the country.

The economists usually praise mobility of the population. I wonder if the current state of affairs is simply due to historical reasons.

danohuiginn• 16 years ago

It seems there are roughly equal numbers of Europeans wanting to live in the US, and USians wanting to live in Europe. I imagine it being possible (albeit hard) to set up some kind of exchange system.

bvi• 16 years ago

Africa would be mostly empty, for a start.

badsectoracula• 16 years ago

If africa became empty, i would move to it. I hate noise.

But then someone who also hates noise would follow...

seanos• 16 years ago

Do you realise the amount of natural resources Africa has? I doubt it would be empty.

maxklein• 16 years ago

I seriously doubt that. Take a look at countries where there is a war in just a small part of it. Like congo, for example. People still stay there, even though they are basically free to move anywhere they want in the entire country.

Even if it were allowed, many people would not move.

known• 16 years ago

Depends on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_map_of_countries_by_...

kilian2• 16 years ago

I hope this comes in time for these guys to stay!

aditya• 16 years ago

I doubt it. It takes forever for bills to become law, and immigration bills usually get stuck in some committee black hole or the other.

pp3• 16 years ago

Shouldn't they be able to get B1 visas with the company they founded? It's most probably registered in the US. But then again, the US immigration system is seriously broken.

tomh-• 16 years ago

If all innovative Dutch people starting cool companies leave Holland, how can we create our own silicon valley here? Is that really the only solution if you don't want to make crud applications for businesses, to just pack and move to the US?

kilian2• 16 years ago

I think it's mostly because of opportunities. You can stay in Holland and only have a couple of angels and investors to pitch to, or move to the US and have a whole lot more.

rbanffy2• 16 years ago

> how can we create our own silicon valley here?

You do it with laws that make it easy to start a company and that make it cost-effective to invest money in a local startup. Tax reductions are one way. Simple processes are another. Labor laws that distinguish between startups and established companies are yet another.

Here in Brazil we have labor laws that more or less make it prohibitively expensive you from legally starting a tech company, bureaucracy that's absolutely maddening, and an equally insane tax code.

drtse4• 16 years ago

Couldn't agree more, +1.

davidw2• 16 years ago

Eventually some would move back, after having made their money in the US, and gained a lot of experience and knowledge in the process.

Stopping people from moving isn't the solution to fostering innovation.

nihilocrat• 16 years ago

I have a simple, genuine question. Why do smart people from countries with the highest quality of life in the world want to immigrate to the US?

starkfist3• 16 years ago

I have a number of Dutch friends. They moved to California for the weather, job opportunities, and to escape the attitudes of their families and fellow countrymen. These are also the same reasons people move from other states within the USA to California.

barrkel2• 16 years ago

There may be an inverse correspondence between risk appetite and quality of life at the high end. Many European countries have a fairly high degree of social cohesion, resulting in a kind of contract between the state and its people: reduce the downside risks of life in return for more regulation and higher taxes. Part of reducing the downside risk is a kind of conservatism, a maintenance of the status quo, with social bargaining and efforts to reduce the impact, speed and consequentially the profitability of change.

But if you're younger, have less to lose, and more appetite for risk, this can look unappealing. It acts as a kind of club that you have to break into, for one thing - too many young people in Europe work on the basis of short-term contracts rather than full-time pensionable positions.

FWIW, speaking as an Irishman living in the UK and holder of a H-1B visa, there's a lot to dislike about the Bay Area too, some of which has informed my decision not to move there (as yet). There's something about it as a place to live (outside of work) that feels like a hastily assembled holiday resort, with wooden buildings (I know, earthquakes), car orientation, shallowness of culture and institutionalization of recreation.

eplanit2• 16 years ago

I think we're dancing around the fundamentals: Capitalism vs. Socialism. Yes, socialism is about social contracts at the expense of greatly reduced freedom for business owners and also career-builders. Freedom = Risk. Potential for creating wealth and new markets come from Free economies. Great inventions do not come from people toiling in "full-time pensionable positions". Like you say, in order to truly grow they need to break out of that world and come to a place that allows their entrepreneurial skills to grow.

Wooden buildings are a problem? With regard to the rest of your complaints -- keep in mind it's a compliment to a superpower to blame all the world's ills on it. For such a small population we sure do rule it, eh?

eplanit2• 16 years ago

I guess, because as their prospective investor states: "Their likelihood of success in the Netherlands is close to zero".

But to further parse your snarky bait: Maybe they're not so smart; or, maybe their estimation of "highest quality of life in the world" differs from yours; or, maybe it's because the U.S. is a wonderful place to start and grow businesses and families.

pg• 16 years ago

In this case it's not countries people are moving to so much as cities. The answer is the same as the reason why actors from rich countries (and other parts of the US) want to move to LA.

benl• 16 years ago

Here's another genuine way of asking the same question.

Why do people continue to believe that European social democracies have the highest quality of life, when people vote with their feet in the other direction?

Retric• 16 years ago

An average speaks nothing about the standard deviation. The minimum quality of life in the US is far lower than many European countries, but young, educated, intelligent, and motivated people are rarely at the bottom.

PS: Consider the AIDS rate in Washington DC at ~3%. "Our rates are higher than West Africa" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03... However, other areas of the country are way below that, even as other groups are much worse. "Black men, with an infection rate of nearly 7 percent, carry the weight of the disease, according to the report, which also underscores that the District's HIV and AIDS population is aging. Almost 1 in 10 residents between the ages of 40 and 49 has the virus."

lutorm• 16 years ago

"Last year 8% of U.S. residents founded companies"

Really? That simply can't be right. Were there 24 million companies founded last year? I have to say that if I count all the people I know that have ever founded a company, let alone last year, it's nowhere near 8%.

starkfist3• 16 years ago

That seems way off. SBA says it's closer to 600,000.

torpor• 16 years ago

You live in a bubble.

matrix2• 16 years ago

Should there be options for smart guys like this to come to America? Absolutely, but let's be realistic; these guys have a few options. They could immigrate to Canada - unlike America, Canada welcomes people with open arms. Forget that rubbish about "all the expertise is in Silicon Valley". There is no shortage of smart, experienced people in other countries. Heck, in Vancouver they would just be a short hop away from the valley if they really must be (although why you'd want to leave Vancouver beats me... think San Francisco, except much nicer).

And of course, they could always do this in Holland. Seriously, why not? It's not like a business never became successful in Holland.

Personally as someone who is dealing with US immigration bureaucracy, I am opposed to the founder visa because on the very long list of things that need to be fixed with immigration in America and that would also benefit the US economy, this one is item #217. We don't need yet another special interest carveout. No. The system needs to work in the best interests of the nation and to treat people with fairness and dignity. Aiming for anything less is just not even trying.

pp3• 16 years ago

What would be the top 3 items on that list?

matrix2• 16 years ago

No doubt that list is different for everyone, but here's mine:

1) Replace employer-sponsored and lottery green cards with a points-based self-petitioning system that can be tuned annually according to the nation's needs. Such a system would award points for basic criteria for age, language, education and experience, with bonus points for experience in occupations for which there are shortages.

2) Eliminate H1B and its byzantine rules, replacing it with a simpler short-term work visa that has a 2 year limit and no renewal. Anything longer in not temporary, and falls in the category above (and if the person does not qualify for 1) then why is it necessary to hire this person and not an American?)

3) Crack down on USCIS backlogs. There is no excuse for it taking years to process visas. Quite apart from the fact that people people's live on hold for that wrong is unjust, it costs American businesses real money. If they need an expert in a certain field, they need it now, not at some indeterminate time.

nearestneighbor2• 16 years ago

Having never been to Vancouver, I'd be curious to know why you think it is nicer than SF. I've heard it's colder than Seattle with a lot of druggies and petty street crime.

imack2• 16 years ago

I don't think Vancouver is worse than Seattle in terms of "druggies and street crime", it's just more concentrated and visible. Given the warm climate and concentration of social services, it's a bit of a magnet for transients from all over Canada.

Aside from that, I think you can attribute a lot of the differences to the simple fact that Vancouver doesn't have any highways going through it or anywhere near the downtown core.

I prefer it to San Fran, but given the 4 degree(C) weather with rain today, I can appreciate someone taking the opposing view.

imack2• 16 years ago

As a Canadian citizen, part of me wants the "founders visa" to fail because it passing would remove a small advantage we have in a sea of disadvantages. RIM, for example, was not founded by someone born in Canada. I'm not exactly sure what makes it easier to immigrate here, it just seems easier if you have certain education.

In a similar thread, Microsoft opened a development office in Vancouver (well, outside of it) more/less because it was easier to bring offshore talent here than to Redmond. Given that it's only a 2 hour drive away, it seemed like a good example of more liberal immigration laws helping out. Although, the net effect of this seems to be that the Canadian office is really just a holding pattern for top talent who can't get an H1-B yet.

starkfist3• 16 years ago

I'm not exactly sure what makes it easier to immigrate here, it just seems easier if you have certain education.

It's actually not easier, in 80% of the cases it takes 64 months for the visa to process.

http://www.canadavisa.com/federal-business-immigration-entre...

boris• 16 years ago

They could immigrate to Canada - unlike America, Canada welcomes people with open arms.

If you look at the "wait time" for your application (provided you managed to meet all the requirements, which are not trivial, BTW), on average it is about 1.5-2 years. What do you think will happen to these guys' startup/idea if they had to wait for a couple of years before they could start the business in Canada?

demallien• 16 years ago

Here's the thing: immigration is something that is waaaay out of your control as a founder. It doesn't matter how clever you are, if some snooty clerk decides that they don't like you, you're done for, your dream is going to die.

I personally think that start-ups are already hard enough without having to contend with gratuitous bureaucratic roadblocks. You would be better off founding your company in your own country (assuming that we are talking about people from modern Western or Asian countries). Putting your dream at the mercy of bureaucrats is a recipe for disaster.

This is a little bit of a cry from the heart. The dramas I had, as an Australian wanting to work in France were just unbelievable - clerks that flatout refused to apply the rules, disintrested bosses, ridiculous catch-27 style rules in the first place, it was almost impossible to get a work visa, even as an engineer with more than 10 years experience. I even had to spend 6 months shuttling backwards and forward between London and Paris every week for 6 months whilst fighting the bureaucracy. And, as if the rest wasn't bad enough, the only way that I eventually got my paperwork approved was to get the personal support of the mayor of Paris. As an interesting aside, once I got passed the roadblock clerk, and passed up to the next stage where they deal with 'special' cases, the clerk couldn't understand why my application hadn't been approved straight-away.

Anyway, start-ups don't need distractions of that size.

Visas for Foreign Entrepreneurs

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