Startup Visa

http://nat.org/blog/2009/10/startup-visa/

by tspiteri • 17 years ago

30 9 17 years ago

mseebach• 17 years ago

I used to be involved in some European youth NGO work. Getting participants from outside the Schengen in, just for non-work visits, is also a big nuisance. So at a meeting we adopted a resolution to be put in front of the relevant EU officials that a special youth NGO visa should be put in place (not surprisingly, nothing happened).

If it was, it would have been nice for us, but I have roughly the same feeling then than I have towards this: "We" (not me since I'm not a US citizen and as such don't really get to lobby the US government) are lobbying for something that good for us and "our" people by arguing it's for the greater good of society. But in fact, were we to get this adopted, we'd only further complicate a complicated and broken system.

"Me too" exceptions are poisoning pretty much all areas of the political system in most of the "first" world, and only serves to get in the way of actual reform.

I'd love to come to the US and work for a startup. But I won't subject myself to the uncertainty of having to leave the country immediately if I were to leave that company. The same goes for a transfer under L1. If you want me, I'll come, but don't make me jump through bureaucracy hoops that no-one remembers what are for anyway.

chrischen• 17 years ago

Jared Polis of Colorado is already on board. My cofounder is Canadian.

We invite promising college students so I think it's time we stepped up and invited promising people who skip college.

bad_user• 17 years ago

I don't have a college degree ... I don't because I didn't had enough money and had to get a job. I also live in a European country, and living in Silicon Valley would be like a dream come true (having around you smart people that share your passion must be great).

Unfortunately the world is still looking up to these college degrees as an exclusive guarantee of some sort. I know that college graduates had opportunities to learn and interact with real mentors and everything, I know some of them worked really hard for that degree ... but there are also many graduates that haven't learned anything and wasted their time and resources, going through exams by gaming the system. I also know that in some colleges in my country you can bribe the dean to get that degree in a couple of days.

One day someone offered to hire me to work for the government ... he was impressed with my online resume. The offered salary was one fourth as I was earning at my job. I told him I didn't had a college degree and he never spoke to me again ... there are times when I consider my lack of a degree as an asset.

notauser• 17 years ago

I agree with you that there are a lot of people who are extremely valuable to an economy despite not having a degree. However I would suggest that a degree is still a good bar to have in place.

- The average quality of the with-degree pool is subject to a lower bound, which helps reduce the number of applicants to a manageable level. This is important because there are a lot of potential applicants out there, too many to humanly sort through in any kind of fair way.

- Getting a degree is mostly based on merit and effort. There are exceptions but in a great deal of the world a sufficiently motivated person can scrape together enough money to get a degree. I can't think of another verifiable discriminator that can be used worldwide where that can be said to be true.

Certainly in a European country where degrees tend to be highly subsidized (my BEng and MEng cost me less than $25k in total, all of which was covered by government loans) making someone get one before you look at them for immigration or some types of jobs doesn't seem unwarranted.

antonovka• 17 years ago

I agree with you that there are a lot of people who are extremely valuable to an economy despite not having a degree. However I would suggest that a degree is still a good bar to have in place.

Why is a degree any less of an arbitrary requirement than requiring extensive real-world experience (thus restricting opportunities available to many recent graduates)?

I think it's simply naive and foolish to exclude candidates based entirely on secondary indicators of their skills. First-pass filtering is easy enough based on primary indicators.

Moreover, due to the rapid increase of college attendance post WWII (starting with the introduction of the GI bill), college degrees are no longer a rarity -- without further context, they are not really a suitable secondary indicator of much of anything. Now you have to get a phd to stand out from the crowd.

snitko• 17 years ago

Well, maybe that's a good thing those guys reject you knowing you don't have a dergee? Maybe that's a way the universe tells you can do better without them?

tptacek2• 17 years ago

The college requirement on H1-B visas is broken. But believing that doesn't require me to believe that "Startup Visas" are a good idea. If we want to foster more startups in the US, we should fix health care. Far more potential startups are killed because their founders can't give up company health care for their families than are killed because their foreign founders can't get visas.

kapitti• 17 years ago

Health care and the complications of the US tax code.

tptacek2• 17 years ago

What part of the US tax code retards startups? From what I can tell, for people who are aggressive about taxes, it helps them: search YC for "S-Corporation" and "reasonable salary".

I've never heard someone say "I was going to start a company, but the tax situation is all screwed up." On the other hand, I have heard "I was going to join a startup, but I can't give up my health insurance" several times in the last few months.

Startup Visa

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