The rules of this startup visa never made any sense. They basically ensured that very few potential immigrant founders would qualify and the ones that did were in a place where they probably didn't see the value in that path as opposed to other business related visas.
>The rules of this startup visa never made any sense.
Can you elaborate specifically on the rules of the USA startup visa that didn't make sense? For comparison and discussion, you can look at other countries' startup visa programs [1] like Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, etc.
Basically, the idea is to craft the visa rules such that the barriers are high enough that it allows legitimate foreign entrepreneurs with real business prospects to filter through. On the other hand, if you make the criteria "too easy", it becomes a "back door visa" for non-productive foreigners to abuse.
It's a balance between those two outcomes. Did any other country tune their visa policy correctly? If so, what did USA specifically get wrong and what did the other countries get right?
> Can you elaborate specifically on the rules of the USA startup visa that didn't make sense?
As someone pointed out a couple weeks ago [1]:
> From the article:
> "To qualify for the rule, entrepreneurs would have to meet high standards. A foreigner must demonstrate that he or she will contribute to economic growth or job creation and show that a reputable investor has put at least $250,000 into the company. Under this rule, they can stay in the U.S. for 30 months, with the possibility of a 30-month extension. They cannot apply for a green card during this period."
> This sounds like a pretty lame visa. How are you supposed to build a startup if you only have 30 months to do so? Why would investors risk $250k if the founder may be deported in 30 months? What happens after the extension period?
So from your link, that startup rule got wrong the 'Defining Success: Criteria for Permanent Residence' which states:
> Conditional entrepreneur visas can typically be renewed or converted to permanent residence after two to four years if the immigrant creates a successful business. (An exception is the Australian Venture Capital Entrepreneur program, which provides immediate permanent residence.)
But here the rule is simply: 'They cannot apply for a green card during this period.'. So even if your startup is successful, you're kicked out after 2.5 or 5 years.
This visa program deserves to be repealed. This is a big contrast to a couple of years ago when you could bring in 200k+ in to the country and start a business. Australia and Canada would grant a permanent residency.
I know everyone likes blaming Trump for everything but i’m happy when they decide to reform immigration programs that don’t make sense.
I'm not familiar with other countries entrepreneurship visas.
This rule originally required $345,000 in investment from US based investors before the visa is awarded. The amount was then revised down to $250k after comments from the executive and investor community. It then required $500k in recurring revenue and 20% annualized revenue growth in order to extend the visa after 2 years.
I'm not sure why a foreign startup founder with a product that raised $250k from US investors and can confidently say they will have $500k in revenue want to temporarily immigrate to the US? Nothing is stopping them from operating in the US and there are existing visas for business owners operating in the US they can use that don't have all of the related hoops.
I think ultimately this would be underutilized at best and gamed much like the EB5 program at worst.
>I'm not sure why a foreign startup founder [...] want to temporarily immigrate to the US?
To make sure I'm not misinterpreting that, you're saying startup founders would rather run their startup company remotely thousands of miles away? E.g. the foreign startup founder stays in France which is 6+ time zones away while his company and employees are working in the USA? To be clear, we're not talking about the mother ship of a mature company opening a branch office in another country but instead, an infant startup company with maybe the founder and 1 or 2 other people. Even if the majority of startup founders wanted that arrangement, what VCs would invest in that type of working structure?
>Nothing is stopping them from operating in the US and there are existing visas for business owners operating in the US they can use that don't have all of the related hoops.
If you look at the other USA visa options[1], they are not exactly redundant with the proposed startup visa. (E.g. EB5 requires higher amount of $1 million from the immigrant which basically means the immigrant is already wealthy instead of starving entrepreneur with no money.
The other visas are based on talent/skill such as advanced hard-to-find PhD or require employers to sponsor. The immigrant is his own employer.)
I think you and I have a different view of the type of entrepreneur this visa would apply to.
I don't think a foreign startup with 1 or 2 employees is going to attract $250k investment from US investors. (source: I once started a tech company in south america, US investors rarely invested outside of the US in early stage businesses) I think this would just be too risky for the US investor.
On the other hand if there was a startup that were within 2 years reach of $500k recurring revenue and 20% growth and were derisked to the point that US investors were interested in putting up real money then they are probably established enough that they wouldn't want to make the move for such a short time frame.
I think when people first read about this visa rule they imagined it'd be more ycombinator hacker types ("infant startup company with maybe the founder and 1 or 2 other people") when in reality that wasn't the case.
I wish I could remember where I saw the video (a guy with a bunch of gumballs representing population), but I remember he spoke about how the visa process is really beneficial for the USA but bad for other countries. The point being that we drain their talent pool while increasing our own.
The argument being that as we skim the top people from the talent pool of other countries we reduce their capability to push innovation and ideas within their own infrastructure. Instead the USA benefits in that we don't have to have the smartest people just the most attractive place for them to come and help our country. So while I disagree with his message behind this move, I think he inadvertently helped the rest of the world...
It is worth noting that productivity and innovation are a team sport.
If you place a single bitcoin programmer in the middle of, say, Yemen, that person would be a lot less productive than they would in the US.
This might be marginally improved with the internet (at least the person doesn't have to physically ask questions or purchase books), but only marginally.
Consider:
1. Tough time understanding the needs of paying business customers because the business are smaller and less tech savvy.
2. Tough time hiring other workers to expand because they are fewer schools that produce programmers, managers etc.
3. Tough time with internet, electricity and so forth because the infrastructure isn't there.
4. Tough time with knowing what the legal hoops are for setting up a company and a contract because the institutions have been weakened.
And so on.
Of course there are smart and innovative people there who can do useful work in that context. But that is not the same as the US context.
Isn't the response that for those businesses to grow, for those schools to produce more programmers, to build out the infrastructure, the top performers who are motivated to solve or improve such problems must stay in their country to work on them? If they go elsewhere, then elsewhere gets better solutions but their home doesn't.
/Until we learn to package the solution in a nice development kit and resale it back to their homeland at a nice markup.
I doubt that is accurate. Generally speaking, most places which are hostile to new business ideas aren't going to become less hostile if they retain more of "their" smart people, because the problems are not things that can be easily solved by simply having smart people around.
I mean, if smart people stay in Russia instead of move to the US, is that going to change that rampant corruption and government control make it hard to run a legitimate business in Russia? If smart people stay in China instead of move to the US, does that mean that the oppression that the Chinese Communist Party engages in is going to go away through magic? If smart people stay in Greece instead of move to America, is that going to solve their sovereign debt problems? If smart people stay in Venezuela, how will they solve the problem of there not being enough food to eat?
Those are all examples off of the top of my head. I'm certain less dramatic ones can be easily conjured up for any country where someone may decide to choose USA to start up.
Really? Please explain how having more smart people would fix the problem there.
I don't think they have a shortage of high IQ people in Greece. They seem to have a shortage of money to spend, and a culture that is hostile to spending less money because of trust issues within their society. How do you throw smart people at that problem to make it go away?
No, I said that more smart people would not fix the problems with Greek society that make starting businesses there vs. USA unpleasant. That doesn't say anything about whether or not "we need visas."
Maybe! After all, those "smart people" may turn to solving or changing the underlying limiting economic or business issues. Either as a focus of their efforts or by necessity of running a business. Or by contributing to innovation in more "traditional" channels.
On the other side of it, why would these "smart people" want to bother helping their homeland versus helping them and theirs?
Maybe it's worse for those countries, but in a world of globalisation, it's not irrational to pursue the opportunities in a place where you can get the most bang for your buck. You can always return if you want to, but that's not the path of least resistance.
For the context of this comment, this is if these "smart people" couldn't come to the U.S. instead. ("The argument being that as we skim the top people from the talent pool of other countries we reduce their capability to push innovation and ideas within their own infrastructure.")
Basically, if these "smart people" couldn't come to the U.S., there would be no option. They wouldn't have any where else to go, and would have to help their homeland in order to help them and theirs. No other option if they couldn't come to the U.S. instead (if the theory is correct).
Pretty much. 40% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrant families. Likewise, 7 of the top 10 brands in the world were founded by U.S. immigrants or their children.
How many of those immigrants were sponsored by a corporation or investor and restricted in how and where they could work by the terms of their employment?
How many came here as free and full members of the workforce, allowed to pursue their own career paths as they saw fit?
There's a huge difference between supporting immigration and employer controlled visa programs.
The newest fortune 500 companies (founded last 25 years) are more likely to have an immigrant founder. Corporate sponsorship (H1B, etc.) was part of the Immigration Act of 1965, meaning that even in lieu of more restrictive immigration, immigrants are still heavy hitters for generating jobs and revenue.
Of course 40% of businesses were stared by immigrants. America is the land of immigrants. The articles states since 1850. Even the Trump families subsequent good fortunes were made possible by an immigrant.
Most of my friends and extended families have a grand parent or two who were immigrants. If not grand parent then great grand parent.
If you read the article, you'd see the criteria for which they describe it as being either an immigrant (18% of Fortune 500 founders) or the child of an immigrant (22% of Fortune 500 founders).
Grandchildren are not included, hence Donald Trump doesn't qualify.
The reason I quoted grand parents is because a good amount of Fortune 500s were created in the 1900s. That would be my parents to grandparents generations not millenials.
Fortune 500 companies founded since 1985 are more likely to be founded by immigrants (20%) than companies founded before 1985 (17%). This isn't about your grandparents.
The definition of immigrant founder, as others have pointed out, is an immigrant or a child of an immigrant. I wasn't born in 1985 so it is almost as much about my grand parents (17%) as it is about me (20%).
My definition of immigrant is not a child of an immigrant.
True, but on the other hand, if 5 people found a company, and one of them is an immigrant or the child of an immigrant, that counts as an immigrant founded company, even if the company would have been founded without that one person.
That's only tangentially involved in this discussion though. That video is about whether opening immigration pathways to the USA can reduce world poverty. I never reviewed the rules that are being overturned here, so I can't say whether they made sense or not, but they were probably targeted at increasing US economic growth, not reducing world poverty.
It's pretty obviously easy to game. Similar programs currently in place are basically funnels for rich foreigners from China and other countries to get green cards for doing marginally productive things like buying commercial property.
I think that the rules of this startup visa made perfect sense for the venture capital people who were pushing it. The rules basically boil down to, If a VC thinks that so and so has a good enough shot at a business that we want to fund him, don't make immigration a barrier.
It was never intended as a path for large numbers of good people to immigrate to the USA, and so makes no sense for that. It was just meant to get government out of the way of people who are likely to generate jobs here.
The goal of good government should be to make decisions that make the people's lives better, and not to make all decisions feel wonderfully democratic.
People with a likely decent track record are willing to put their money down on, "This person can create jobs." Would you prefer to have those jobs created or not? Saying yes to the option is very much not a zero-sum game.
Yes, in a democracy, we allow people other than the government to make decisions, because we understand that the proper scope of what should be voted on is not "everything."
I don't think you're recognizing a critical distinction between the type of decision being made.
The difference here is that a job offer or an investment is a decision made by an employer or an investor. US citizenship or work/residency, on the other hand, is a status not with an employer or an investor but with the US government and the citizens it represents.
Thinking back to my first startup job, the founder was exactly such a person who was in a place where according to you he probably wouldn't see the value in the startup path. Because he was eminently employable with the quality of his credentials and skills, so, why not just get a high paying job working for someone else? Why bother with all the work of a startup, right?
And yet he did see the value in the startup path. Which led to him starting a company that grew to a decent size and got acquired and continued to provide innovations and value for the new parent company. And kept many people employed. All because of what this one founder started.
So, from a jobs standpoint, and from an innovation and business expansion standpoint, I would say the visa made plenty of sense.
Well yes and no. On one hand, if you secure a 250K funding this is a good option to get inside the US. On the other, if your startup fails for whatsoever reason, you have to head back, can't work anywhere else.
I can't say I'm tremendously enthusiastic about this visa. My objection to it is the same as my objection to almost all specialized, employer sponsored visas - I don't think employers, universities, or investors should be empowered to decide who is allowed to live in the US. If you grant them this power, they will abuse it.
Think about it this way - you're a startup founder with US citizenship. You go to an investor who offers you 100K in seed funding in exchange for X% of your business. You say no deal. Ok, says the employer, but that does mean I won't give you my money.
Now imagine you don't have citizenship. Same scenario. Ok, says the employer, but that does mean I won't give you the right to live in the United States.
One point I've emphasized over and over here on HN is that you can be very pro-immigration and still be very opposed to programs that put private citizens (employers, investors) or corporations in a position of government sanctioned power over would-be immigrants. I think employers and investors should be allowed to decide who gets a job or money, but the power ends there. They absolutely should not be empowered to run the US immigration system for their personal benefit.
These visas are often described as "allows foreign engineers/entrepreneurs/etc to live in the US." That's misleading. It should be described as "allows corporations and investors to decide who is and isn't allowed to live in the US."
So, the tech industry is in favor of a regulatory regime that allows tech corporations to be gatekeepers for who is and isn't allowed to immigrate? What a surprise.
Think of it this way - I can accept that google is allowed to no-hire someone who contributed to open source but can't reverse a binary tree on the spot at a whiteboard. Google's call.
But should google be making decisions about who is allowed to live in the US based on these interviews? That changes the question dramatically for me.
I trust the government even less. Charlie Gard is a good example - the UK government has not only decided that he should die, but that his parents are barred from bringing him to another country for treatment.
On top that, the UK is saying that he has to die at the hospital and that his parents can't bring him home on hospice.
It's amazing that the hospital has the authority to deny the parents the ability to bring the child home.
They may be tending to a vegetable, but unless they endanger anyone they are entitled to this.
More importantly - hospitals can make mistakes, and any entity with power might eventually abuse it. It is frightening that the hospital has this much power over this family.
The hospital is being backed up by the British and European court systems, and it seems pretty reasonable that those groups together all have this power. If the court had disagreed with the hospital then the hospital would not have had this ability.
> unless they endanger anyone they are entitled to this
In Britain, the rights of the child are considered to pre-empt the rights of their parent to control them. In this case, the doctors argue (and the courts have agreed) that the parents are asking to do something that will cause pain to the child for no benefit to it.
> It's amazing that the hospital has the authority to deny the parents the ability to bring the child home.
It doesn't. The courts do, and the parents got good quality legal advice (pro bono, which is a problem, there's an argument for these kinds of cases to have some legal aid).
No. The Charlie Gard case is an horrific example of how easily grief and desperation are exploited with false hope.
Your corruption of the facts - the UK's government has not "decided he should die" - is an echo of that exploitation.
It is the same construct that leads the unwell to adopt dangerous or ineffective remedies from quacks and snake oil merchants, only in this case it is being leveraged by political and religious groups to further their own agenda.
No. Real hospitals in the US and in Italy have offered to treat him, but the UK has indeed decided he should die and preventing the parents from bringing him to those hospitals.
No. You have moved beyond emotive mis-statement into lying. You are repeating propaganda. The Italian proposal is a bad joke. It is a Vatican hospital with no experience in this field, with no hope of offering any treatment, and is simply grandstanding on behalf of the Pope. As things stand, the UK has not "decided he should die". The UK High Court and Supreme Courts - not government - accepted that he is dying, and that any attempt to prolong life would be cruel. The US hospital proposal may be serious and is under consideration by UK courts, but it too has nevertheless been hijacked by uncomprehending US politicians.
In all this I feel mostly for the parents. Their pain and desperation has been used by cynical opportunists for column inches, and that is just revolting.
One thing - can someone explain to me at what point the hospital becomes a prison?
It feels like I'm missing some utter, basic detail because I keep thinking "so why not just pick up your child, even with the hospital complaining, walk out the front door, and go to <wherever you want to go>"?
Same reason you can't do that when the court says your child needs treatment and you don't want them to have it - the state intervenes on behalf of the child and overrides your parental rights.
Based on the description of the rule in the article, the emphasis is on fundraising rather than producing jobs or value. The thresholds of $250k and $100k remind me of Dr. Evil's $1 million. It's just not enough of a bar to separate friends and family funds from legitimate business rationales.
Edit: In response to comments, currently $100k and $250k are not uncommon amounts for a person to incur attending university in the US. Solo operational costs in The Bay can swallow much of either in a year without hiring anyone or building anything...but in fairness either is a lot of money for most people if its yours and not very much if it is someone else's.
You can already pay $500k for an EB-5 visa and get a green card. I dont know why anyone would lie to the US government and pay $250k just to be able to stay in the country.
250k is nothing for millions of people. There also millions of people for whome 1000 dollars is a lot of money and that don't know anyone rich enough to shell out that kind of money.
Alright, so I have companies in the US (Delaware/Nevada), never resided in the US and if needed I could go with one of those E visas given I pay $100-500k indirectly for the privilege. I am still able to visit US 2x year for 3 months at a time. What's all the fuss about?
The bigger issue here is that it shows that the tech leaders that have been "working within the system" do not have very much sway over the Trump administration, as this was the only concession they were able to get from him. Thats the bigger blow than this specific rule.
Yes, this is strong evidence that having the President's ear counts for nothing. They are attending these meetings at a high cost to their reputation and getting nothing in return.
These meetings should not have any cost to their reputation and for the most part they don't. No matter what you think of the President, it is unquestionably good for America for our savvy CEOs to be advising him.
People trying to punish the CEOs who advise him are harmful to our country, and worse than the politicians that make decisions to further their own careers instead of do what's best for their country/state/county.
That would be true if the purpose of the meetings --- really, for any President, but maybe most especially with this one --- was to advise. But it's not: it's to endorse. The way you know that is, the meetings pointlessly include several competing big names simultaneously, and are organized around a photo op.
If you want to dispute that these meetings are done for their optics and not for their productivity, fine. You won't convince me, or I think many other people, but that doesn't mean you're not entitled to hold your own opinion about them.
All I'd like to establish is that it is, at this point in the conversation, not reasonable for you to write as if you don't understand the objection people have to these meetings.
If the meetings are done for optics and not productivity, why have Musk and Kalanick not mentioned that? Musk said he left on principle, and Kalanick said being on the council was getting in the way of his goal.
You're repeating yourself needlessly. Obviously, people who leave these groups have decided that the liabilities of endorsing Trump outweigh all potential benefits.
> Obviously, people who leave these groups have decided that the liabilities of endorsing Trump outweigh all potential benefits.
Obviously. The point of my OP was that there shouldn't be liabilities to advising the president (liabilities for endorsement are another matter).
> You're repeating yourself needlessly.
Because the central point of our disagreement is whether being on the economic council is an endorsement or not. Musk and Kalanick both being on the council and loudly leaving it, but not telling any of the public that the advisory council is an empty photo-op seems unlikely to me. So I wanted to get your explanation for why that would happen, but you twice didn't respond to the question.
I don't really even concede the validity of question.
Despite what they may say, tech leaders don't go to these things in the hope of seriously influencing the administration. They're grown ups, and most of them pay lobbying operations. All of them understand that nothing important starts at a giant polished wooden table occupied by their competitors on one side and the news media on the other.
You honestly believe Tim Cook woke up the morning of that last meeting and thought to himself, "the best thing I can do with my time today is to sit down at a table with Donald Trump and Eric Schmidt"? Of course you don't.
The reality is: Trump's invitation to these events is coercive, in the sense that Cook will make news by not attending, and 50% (well, OK, 39.2%) of the US market will be irritated by that news. Attending is problematic, but if he shuts up, it's less problematic than not attending. So that's what he does.
It's for a similar reason that Musk and Kalanick don't hold press conferences decrying the theater of these photo op meetings. The political photo-op is as old as cameras, and tilting at windmills offers them nothing but downside.
Which brings us back to the reason we're irritated that Cook and Schmidt go to these things. The current calculation they're making says they lose less by going, and effectively providing a soft endorsement, than by boycotting. That's because their own employees --- who overwhelmingly oppose the Trump administration --- are allowing them to get away with it. If even 5% of Google's employees credibly threatened a work stoppage of any sort over Schmidt's co-opting of their work to endorse Trump, Schmidt would not be allowed to attend; the costs to Google would outweigh the benefits.
Being quiet to not irritate the 39.2% of their customers is plausible, but in the case of Musk and Kalanick they didn't stay quiet. They left, and stated publicly the reasons why they left. I'm still inclined to believe that if the council was nothing more than a photo-op for Trump, Musk and Kalanick would've said that when they left. It would've made them look even better than they do now to that 39.2% ("I want to give my advice but the council is just a photo-op" is better to that segment than "I'm not giving my valuable advice because it's no longer a net-positive for my career/company").
Since, again, the fact that these are giant round-table meetings, of a sort that never occur in the industry itself, performed largely in front of cameras and with every word recorded, I think the extraordinary claim here is yours, and the evidence you've supplied is essentially nil.
That said, I think I've been pretty clear that I don't expect you to agree with me; I simply expect you to stop writing as if you can't imagine any reason other than (I suppose) bloody-mindedness that people would have a problem with Cook and Schmidt and Pichai attending these meetings.
I'm having trouble deciding whether this breathtakingly naive or breathtakingly cynical. It seems like you're arguing that CEOs and corporations should abstain from any kind of moral reasoning no matter what political indicators suggest. This seems odd to me, if only because consumers are quite likely to to adjust their purchasing decisions if they feel politically alienated by a firm's involvement with government.
It's cutting off your nose to spite your face. No one is better off by sabotaging our economy except those who want to further their political careers by saying "I told you so" at the end of his term. It's politicking of the worst kind and damages the democracy.
Good democracy:
- fierce competition in the election
- choose winner
- work together as much as possible to do what's best for the country
Replacing step 3 with "do as much as possible to obstruct the winner and hurt the country until we win again" is stupid. It slows us down and weakens the functioning of the democracy.
Nothing wrong with anyone saying "We are fully against policy X". There is something wrong with "We are fully against policy X, so we will harm unrelated things: Y and Z (the economy in this case)".
"Work together as much as possible to do what's best for the country" -- this is a two-way street. Do you believe the Trump administration is sincerely trying to work with anyone?
Where's the policy evidence of that? Musk's involvement came to nothing, he resigned abruptly in response to yet another executive order that went against his values.
It seems more like Trump sits at the table with people to have his own photo taken. Which is not much of a surprise because that has been his entire career for the past 30 years.
The last bullet I could've better stated as "work together as much as possible to do what both parties believe is best for the country". I'm not saying the opposition party should support all the policies of pres, but they should support the ones that they believe are good. It is good for the admin to have input from leaders of economy, and the dems believe that.
Since the Democrats generally do not believe that the purpose of these meetings is to provide the President with operating advice for the country or the economy, it is not incumbent on them to support the meetings. And so, they do not.
Saying you're 'fully against policy X' while cooperating with someone who is implementing policy X is a self-contradictory position. It seems as if you're assuming different policies to be totally independent of each other and that there is some objectively good direction for the the economy as a whole which is clear to all.
I'm curious, do you feel the same way about insurance companies that expressed dissatisfaction with the Affordable Care Act and stopped participating in the exchanges, or do you view that decision as purely business-motivated?
> Saying you're 'fully against policy X' while cooperating with someone who is implementing policy X is a self-contradictory position.
No it's not. The president has an enormous jurisdiction, and you can cooperate on some issues and abstain on others. And you can advise on all of them.
> there is some objectively good direction for the the economy as a whole which is clear to all
It is clear to all that the economy is best off if the titans of our economy give their thoughts to those making policy and decision. I'm not saying everyone has to help the pres do whatever he wants, but withholding advise from the president in the area of economy because you disagree with his stance on immigration is nothing but spite that harms the country.
It is clear to all that the economy is best off if the titans of our economy give their thoughts to those making policy and decision.
Count me out of this, please. If there's evidence of a pattern of bad decisions that are deleterious to the economy as a whole - something each person has to decide for themselves, obviously - then I think it's better not to assist with that process. Otherwise you risk enabling bad outcomes.
> It is clear to all that the economy is best off if the titans of our economy give their thoughts to those making policy and decision.
I don't think that's clear to all, but, in any case, the “titans of our economy” or going to do that whether or not they participate in formal executive commissions or not.
This is absolutely not "clear to all". You're always out on a treacherous rhetorical ledge when you try to speak for "all" in a contentious discussion, but here you've run right off the edge, Wile-E Coyote-style.
That's an irrelevant question, because Trump has demonstrated no interest in input from leaders of the economy.
A more relevant question is whether it's worth it for leaders of the industry to publicly pretend to give input to a person who they know will ignore it.
I disagree. Doing that legitimizes this president and their actions, which is something that plain should not be happening.
Not to mention that it was clear from the start that Trump was never going to listen to them anyway. Just about everyone on that board said no to the Muslim ban. He did it anyway.
This is exactly right. Trump seeks legitimacy for his policies, and by attending these meetings, tech executives give it to him. They get nothing in return. Sad!
I believe this hurts some clients of mine, who were looking at it as a possible answer. They have been spending significant $$$ in the US economy, developing a product that it's unlikely any domestic firm could, and struggling to find a way to stay here so that they have access to American talent. They are currently here on a importer's license or something, which makes it illegal for them to visit their home country.
While I don't want to be taken for one who is just losing their mind over Trump (since they have all typically seemed pretty lame to me), xenophobia is actively harmful to US economic interests.
> developing a product that it's unlikely any domestic firm could, and struggling to find a way to stay here so that they have access to American talent.
How do those two statements not contradict each other? It sounds like "developing a product that it's unlikely any domestic firm could" should really be "developing a product that domestic firms are not interested in" if the talent required to build it is also American.
Good question, simple answer: They have domain knowledge that is basically impossible (or very unlikely) for foreigners to their home country to have. But they have a preference for American talent to build their product, partly because they feel the supply of good programmers is better here (a sentiment I am probably oversimplifying, i.e. maybe they have a complex notion of value. The point is they want to start up here.)
This is to the best of my understanding. They have made some explanatory statements to me, but usually we are working. And they are very polite, not feeling it is really on them to criticize. I know they have used a large number of freelancers in my area, for various tasks.
While this story may not be stereotypical, everyone has their own story and our current immigration policy seems to limit entrepreneurs in many unexpected ways.
On the upside, there's a little good among this crappy situation: It may participate in rebalancing smart people in other countries, which may help other economies have a rebound. It's not all bright either because a smart person has less impact in an less developed economy.
BS, Canada has continued to struggle with a brain drain problem where tech workers can easily cross the border and earn 40 to 50k more per year. The economy has been doing well under Trump and I suspect with decisions such as this, we'll continue to see a rise in American prosperity. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-tech-braindrain-idU...
The government stopping an entirely consensual act between two people or organizations is a blow to those people, because they aren't being allowed to do whatever it is that they otherwise wanted. Whether it would have been a mistake or not is their problem and part of doing business.
You wouldn't use this same logic for actual people, would you? Two people may have sexual intercourse; many acts of intercourse lead to unwanted pregnancy and AIDS, so we should deem these people "unharmed" if the government denies them the opportunity to have sex?
No, sorry, it was sort of a rhetorical question. You said a little earlier that you don't consider cancelling this rule to be a blow since it might have been harmful, and I thought this was an analogous situation. The government is stopping consensual acts between investors and entrepreneurs.
Right. I think it is a "blow" in the sense that the companies expended time and effort preparing for this rule change. I don't know whether it is a "blow" in any way beyond that.
The point is there isn't like a formal definition of "a blow" that you can resort to. It can be "a blow" for any number of reasons, and it doesn't take a ton of imagination to conjure a few.
In general yes. The policy was passed and signed. The industry was ready to start using it, since we are only a week away from the planned start date. This was a concerted effort to block the policy, and therefore could be considered a "blow".
I'm no fan of Donald Trump but this "buy your own visa" scheme always left me very perplexed. I was trying to figure out who would benefit from it, and aside a few wealthy, mostly Asian citizens, I couldn't see the reason for it.
I'm glad it's dead.
p.s.: Before you call me xenophobe keep in mind I'm a foreign born US citizen, I immigrated through the normal procedures.
You are an Italian [1], which thanks to its membership to EU and how US green cards are allocated significantly benefits from the current status quo unlike say Chinese/Indians/Mexicans. So please don't pretend as if you went through any hardship or discount your race privilege. Oh and xenophobia against Asians who are rich is also xenophobia.
The reason Chinese/Indians have huge delays is because of the sheer numbers who apply for green card. What does race have to do with it. The OP might be an Indian Italian.
But I don't think anyone is willing to go to Canada considering the huge salary gap. I got Canadian developer friends who is making half of what I am making in US by sheer number besides the currency exchange rate.
I don't know where you live in the USA so I cannot really judge but I think you should also take in consideration the cost of life in USA and Canada. It's not only about how much you make but about how much you spend.
However, this does not adjust for free healthcare and education.
On the other hand, tech cost of living is skewed by SF and Vancouver.
SF is the #1 tech city in the US whereas Vancouver may be #2 in Canada, but the US is a larger country so SF may "dilute" more. Without stats, this is just guesswork.
I feel like if you are at the top of your game, and can make it at any of the major tech companies or can start your own startup without trouble at finding funding, the U.S. is way better. Most of my friends, including myself, earned 1.5-3x what we'd earn even in a major city as Toronto.
And if you happen to join a great tech company, chances are the health insurance you'll get is superior to the general public healthcare system in Canada.
California vs Montreal is cherry picking the data. You could easily say Chicago (cheap) vs Vancouver (not cheap).
The major economic tech centres in Canada are Toronto and less so, Vancouver. Montreal and Ottawa (because that's where Shopify is HQ'd) are the next biggest.
Toronto and Vancouver are hugely unaffordable when it comes to housing; Montreal and Ottawa are much more affordable.
On the flipside, Vancouver is apparently more expensive than anywhere in the US for housing and median salary is much lower than somewhere like New York City.
Montreal is a big city, so I concede you have a (partial?) point. I have heard horror stories about cost of living in Vancouver here on HN, as well as from people I met in real life.
I'm not sure the gap is that big when you factor in children and housing.
I have two kids. I get offers between 100k/160k CAD in Montreal. Daycare costs me about 800$ per month for each children and I get kick backs from the governement to bring that down to roughly 189$CAD/month. In San Francisco the average is 1900$USD per child.
Then factor in I live in a 265K CAD house, 40 minutes bus ride to city center. I have 3 bedrooms, one office, a huge kitchen, a nice patio, garden etc... In San Francisco the median house price is 1,194,300$ USD.
I could be making 180kUSD and I wouldn't be saving any more money at the end of every month with housing and daycare alone.
Also... I might pay a good deal of taxes but I have great healthcare.
The USA is not defined by Silicon Valley. I make 120k in Richmond, Virginia and another 30k online. Your figures are nowhere near accurate for most American cities.
There are other reasons than money one might live in Canada. It's a country with different values than those of the US. Welcoming to immigrants, relatively safer in terms of violent crime and universal healthcare are high on the list.
Yeah this whole Trump thing is good for the Canadian tech sector is something that sounds plausible, but I don't think it changes much. Canada already has a lot of immigration of tech workers. Although to be fair I had never heard of that Soti company until yesterday on Hacker News, so who knows.
Canada will benefit from this, just remains to be seen how much.
I know a startup that accepted funding from the valley and stayed in Canada.
Main reasonings: USD goes much further in CAD (longer runway), developers cost less, lower cost of living (most places), and the massive amount of government grants (free money) to subsidize startups in R&D, etc. Federal government just put aside something ridiculous like $900 million for innovation funding.
Last, but not least, Canadian citizenship is a real possibility for someone who moves to Canada under a visa program.
Berlin will have a place for you ;) ! Honestly, just another bad news from a country that now began to close its doors to be happy alone. Instead of embracing change and new people, it now makes it extremely difficult for anyone to legally come in. The American Culture became not so wide spreaded because of its interesting closedness, but because it gave many, many people a chance and because it incorporated cultures into this enormous melting pot. I think conservative Americans have not yet realized to what extent the current Administration destroys the glorious brand the country once was. Last time I checked the USA on google maps, there were large areas of empty land that could be the home of a hundred million more without disturbing anyone. At least the acre of Texas prarie that we own is a very lonely space to camp on...
The US does currently take over 1.2 million immigrants legally into the country every year. Certainly, a reasonable person could argue that number should be higher, but that's still a pretty high number for a country that is "closing its doors".
Our schools and infrastructure are crumbling. Taking in more poor immigrants does nothing to address this problem, only makes it worse. Some of the golden European countries are very closed off from the outside world and their solutions are not an apples to apples comparison with that of the USA, which is already the third most populated country in the world.
Honestly, don't call me or any of the people I know that would come "poor" one more time. Including me, we have good savings, earn 6 figures, have good education (not necessarily University, which does not matter that much here in Germany). We are all quite entrepreneurial spirited, yet do not fall in the category "ultrarich". We probably would earn and contribute quite well to the US society. Yet we do not fit in any visa category. So also because of the unwelcoming visa policy and complicated process, my wife and I will now stay here in Germany, currently are in the process of buying a house and just signed the contract for our first employee (onshore, besides 2 offshore). We used to be big USA fanboys, but it is just very difficult to get there. Also my wife is Iranian, which does not ease things.
By the way I know there are those treaty-trader visas that would have allowed us to open/buy a business in the US for a reasonable amount of money. But as it offers no way to a greencard, it does not make sense for us. Imagine operating a well-earning business with a couple of employees for about 20 years and then being sent back when one closes/sells it... why would I do that? At least after a defined period of time (3-5 years) a visa like this should lead to permanent residency.
A lot of people are complaining about the original rule itself, but as someone who deals with US immigration laws everyday, I can tell you why it is. Immigration law is defined by Congress and there are very clear legislation on how immigrants can be granted visas and citizens. Given that, the executive branch has very little room to maneuver to visa rules. Thus the startup visa rules were written in a way to stay within the context of the original Congressional intent of creating EB visa. Otherwise, it will get challenged in court (which every new visa ruled does, including the H4 visa EAD). I was hoping that with Congressional majorities, Trump can actually create a legal start-up visa akin to what we have in other countries. But I guess that won't happen anymore
I don't see how allowing somebody overseas to come to the USA to create a company for 2 to 5 years while attracting hundreds of thousands in American dollars, to only be sent back to their country after the Visa expires (5 years) is a good idea?
How does it benefit the USA to build foreign companies with United States dollars so they can empower their own country and their own people, while middle and lower class Americans continue to grasp at the scraps?
If they're coming to the US and take American VC money, most of them will be building an American company, not a foreign one. Led by a foreigner, yes. But hiring a good bunch of local people if the company ends up successful. The while company won't be just relocating at the end of the visa term, because it's built with people who want to continue working in America.
Or at least that's the idea of a visa like this. I can't say I understand the system enough to tell if it would, in fact, work as planned.
The startup visa is a bad idea (it makes immigration status conditional on funding, which adds perverse incentives to an already dysfunctional funding culture), but the fact that the tech industry can't even get small concessions like this from Trump vitiates the argument that it's worth attending very public meetings with him.
If that were a migration that really happened it would be extremely ironic.
Progressives, infuriated with the racism and sexism in Trump's America, move to China. Only to discover that China is even more racist and sexist!
The US skills based immigration system is based on bringing in indentured labor to enrich corporations.
L-1 visa holders _cannot_ change jobs.
H-1B visa holders have to go through an expensive and cumbersome process to change jobs which effectively restricts their job mobility.
Obviously, outside super-hot job markets like silicon valley, US workers have a hard time competing with indentured labor.
This visa would have created brand new class of "entrepreneur" indentured to deep-pocketed VC firms. They would actually be worse off than H-1B and L-1 workers because - not only would they be beholden to the VC firms for funding (thereby their jobs) in the United States - but they would have to part with their ideas.
No nativist here - just saying how things are working on the ground once you shave off the corporate propaganda.
You picked just about the most inflammatory word you could ("indenture") and repeated it several times. That is exactly the wrong way to comment on a divisive topic here. It leads to shallow discussion and flamewars. So please don't do that. We're hoping for thoughtful, substantive discussion, not rhetorical escalation.
This is indeed a politicized topic, and moderation is hard, but FWIW I see no issue with the parent comment. The point has been discussed here before using similar terms.[1][2]
It isn't just a question of the word, but of using it as a rhetorical weapon in an ideological argument. That leads to flamewars so when we see people doing it we ask them not to.
It's also not ok to use HN primarily for political or ideological battle, since that isn't the purpose of the site. Obviously some topics are more political and commenting in such threads is fine, but it's not to use an account primarily for it.
It's actually a pretty accurate use of the term. Immigrants end up taking less money and putting up with very bad workplace situations because many of them end up forced to work for a particular employer or return (at great expense) to their home country. I don't think that's rhetoric. The work permit system in Canada is much less problematic.
While I get that the comment sounds like a divisive/incendiary and thus non constructive comment, I would not argue that it's an unreasonable exaggeration Or likely to derail substantiative discussion. Just my two cents.
The phrase 'have a hard time changing jobs' seems fine. You could even, if you wanted to, make an argument that this has some things in common with what was historically called indentured labor. But to use a charged phrase as a rhetorical weapon in an ideological battle, which you clearly are doing, is the wrong kind of comment for HN.
The same goes for swipes like "you are kidding right?" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14745448). Using escalating rhetoric on divisive topics causes internet discussion to erupt in flames. Mostly it's negligence rather than arson but the result is the same. If you're going to comment here, please don't do these things.
The guiding value of HN is intellectual curiosity (please see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html). We're hoping for thoughtful conversation, and using the site primarily for political or ideological battle is destructive of that, so we ban such accounts. In particular, it's not ok to create an account here just to do that.
Ok - that "you are kidding" was an unwarranted swipe. I won't do it again.
Regarding "indentured servant" - that is the factually correct term to describe the situation. Even H-1B visa holders themselves use this term.
Here is a video of an H-1B visa holder using the exact term "indentured servant" with Congressman Darrell Issa at some policy event about the H-1B visa in Washington DC: https://youtu.be/2Tgc9m1IwNc?t=35m47s
The term "indentured servant" is exactly the right term to describe the employer-employee relationship between Guest Worker visa holders and their employer's. As demonstrated in the video, even the H-1B workers themselves are saying that they feel like indentured servants.
I personally feel that politically correctness is somehow having the effect of normalizing this very abnormal employee-employer relationship (at-least here in America).
As the guest worker in the video says, if he loses his job - he has to take his kids out of school, sell his car, sell his house and leave. This is not in any way a normal employee-employer relationship.
I would like to think the points I am raising are thoughtful. well researched and articulate. Apart the "swipes" - which I will tone down on - I don't think I am guilty of any other transgressions.
The bigger problem is the one you didn't respond to. You're showing up in an HN thread with a single-purpose account armed with seasoned ideological talking points. That's very much not what this site is for, regardless of which battle it is and which side you're on.
> You could even, if you wanted to, make an argument that this has some things in common with what was historically called indentured labor. But to use a charged phrase as a rhetorical weapon in an ideological battle, which you clearly are doing, is the wrong kind of comment for HN.
You are right, I could have absolutely talked about the history of indentured labor in America - but I don't think that was germane to the implications of the Regulation or the implications for the current (sorry) state of Guest Labor in America which what this discussion was about.
Regarding:
> The bigger problem is the one you didn't respond to. You're showing up in an HN thread with a single-purpose account armed with seasoned ideological talking points. That's very much not what this site is for, regardless of which battle it is and which side you're on.
I am a geek, who has frequented HN for a long time, and before that digg and before that slashdot (I still go there BTW).
I usually don't post very much.
And "seasoned talking points" - cmon. Doing my research before shooting my mouth off - is a GOOD THING and I would like to think that I am elevating the level of discourse.
Infact everyone else (except projectramo - who I did mishandle and doesn't disagree with my characterization of H-1B/L-1 workers) who has weighed in seems to think my comments are very apropos:
Probably I misunderstood you but this is because your posts don't differentiate themselves from someone using HN just for ideological purposes. If so, there's an easy fix.
That's specious reasoning -- there is something to be said for Silicon Valley's capacity to support a self-sustaining tech industry. This critical mass is difficult to achieve and your implication that it can be replicated elsewhere is just deceptive equivocating.
The rationale behind this legislation is that employers have been driving wages down via a self-sustaining lower class of tech workers, where low-cost temporary foreign workers constantly trickle in. This will close that spigot in favor of either the local talent pool or a foreign talent pool where immigrants find an employer to sponsor their application for permanent citizenship.
> capacity to support a self-sustaining tech industry.
You mean the industry that includes tons of companies founded by immigrants or their children?
I'm not saying SV can be replicated elsewhere. But the code you're writing can be, if the price differential is big enough. Outsourcing is a PITA, so if the price differential is not big, why bother. But... if it's big enough, innovative people will find a way to make it work.
> This will close that spigot in favor of either the local talent pool or a foreign talent pool where immigrants find an employer to sponsor their application for permanent citizenship.
Or a foreign office without all the bureaucratic, nativist BS.
I think you need to explain why you think an entrepreneur is "indentured" to a VC.
The entrepreneur has a lot more leeway in making decisions than an employee, and has more freedom in how to spend the company's money.
Do you think that a VC would choose a foreign entrepreneur just because they are foreign? Don't you think other factors (product, team, strategy etc) would play a larger role?
You're missing their point. Suppose you are an engineer in India making $10k / year. You have the same skills and ability as American citizens in San Francisco. So, a startup comes to you and offers you a $60k / year job. You take it, because you can make 6 times as much as you did in India!
However, when you get to the US, you realize that American citizens make $80k - $100k / year for the same job. What do you do? You can't switch jobs, because the H1B program makes it very difficult to do so. You can't threaten to quit, because then your visa only gives you a few months before you have to go back to India -- and back to the $10k / year job. You have no choice -- if you want the $60k / year job, you have to to stick with the company who hired you. So you stay.
The result? The salary for software engineers is driven down. The employer gets extra profits while getting the same work. The software engineers are now making less than they would be if either 1) the H1B program didn't exist, or 2) the H1B program were reformed so that switching jobs is easier.
(Trump did #1. However, #2, reforming H1B, is far better for all employees in the long run. Not surprisingly, #2 is not hugely supported by all companies).
This isn't at all how H1B visas work in Silicon Valley that I've ever seen.
There are definitely large contracting companies which abuse the H1B process in this way, but at Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Yahoo/etc I have never seen an H1B holder make any less than their counterpart born in the US.
Doesn't mean I don't agree the H1B system needs serious reform, but it's unfair to tar all employers with that brush.
(Best reform idea I've heard: the limited H1B slots go to whoever is paying the most for the job. Inherently prioritized the most economically impactful immigrants and also creates upward pressure on wages. Win/win!)
> I have never seen an H1B holder make any less than their counterpart born in the US
I have. And based on the patterns I saw in hiring, I expect that it's the same across the industry, even when companies aren't trying to underpay immigrants. It's a fascinating perspective when you get involved with hiring at the offer stage and see the negotiations. You can send the exact same offer to an H1-B and a citizen and the counter-offers will be completely different. A citizen will ask for more comp and an H1-B will ask for an EB2 sponsorship. Both are entirely rational decisions the since employment flexibility of a green card is probably worth more to an immigrant than an immediate increase in comp.
> Best reform idea I've heard...
I still think the best idea is to impose ratios like other countries do. Let companies hire as many immigrants as the like so long as they're also employing, in similar positions, the requisite number of Americans as well. If the theory is that highly-skilled immigrants are bringing skills and knowledge that's in short supply here, we should be trying to have them work with Americans as much as possible so that Americans can learn from them. Companies that abuse the current system end up having nearly all-immigrant work forces. Meanwhile, smaller companies without large legal teams can have difficulty getting even a single H1-B hired. Ratios fix both problems and they also help immigrants assimilate faster because there's less chance they end up working with mostly other immigrants.
Your idea of using salary as the deciding factor is great in theory, but in practice we don't allocate capital wisely. We'd end up with a lot of H1-Bs in finance and almost none in science or any of the many lower-paying areas that require education and intelligence.
> I have never seen an H1B holder make any less than their counterpart born in the US.
By pure economic logic, they must. Because the cost of the immigration attorneys and process has to be paid by the employee. If the employer absorbed that cost, it would be cheaper to hire local at the same price(salary).
Not only that, but the lower level of mobility an immigrant has means he cant switch jobs as easily, thus sacrifices potential earnings that a local wouldnt.
There is no way around it: any restriction you make will harm the person being restricted. It is thus that it think any kind of immigration policy aims at harming individuals at the request of others.
The best reform would be remove the requirement altogether and let companies hire who they want, and individuals work where they want to. While the US pertains itself to questions like how restrictive their visas should be, other countries panic at the constant brain drain.
Silicon valley H1B jobs are a tiny fraction of H1B jobs. Something like 90%+ go to InfoSys & Tata like consultancies which do exactly what the parent comment mentioned.
You're making an argument based on an infrequent exception to the rule
The parent comment was talking about H1Bs working for startups. Startups are not InfoSys or Tata. I agree with you and the parent comment, as I said, that H1Bs are widely abused by InfoSys and Tata and I would be very happy to see that abuse stopped -- but let's not tar startups with the same brush!
You're missing my point: this is not the H1B. This is an entrepreneur visa which is (presumably) less abusive.
The example he gave seems to indicate that the power dynamic you just mentioned carries over to entrepreneurs who have equity in the firm, who are empowered to make decisions and so on.
I'm not inclined to presume that it would be less abusive (or more abusive) or abused than any other visa program which creates financial incentives for domestic capital.
When the "entrepreneurs" very status in the US is dependent on being in the good-graces of anyone else - especially vultures like VC firms - these "entrepreneurs" are no better than indentured servants.
Think of it this way - any dispute with the "sponsoring" VC firm could snowball into a complaint to DHS which could result in the "entrepreneur" having to leave the country (and leave behind the carcass of a company the VC's will then proceed to digest).
Entrepreneurs might not understand or appreciate this yet, but they are better off going to Canada or somewhere else as landed immigrants with rights - instead of living in the US as indentured servants of some entity.
The junking of this rule has potentially saved so many startups from being absorbed by entrenched players (Hello Google Ventures). The resultant dispersion of wealth/ideas and the increase in competition will benefit all of us.
"Think of it this way - any dispute with the "sponsoring" VC firm could snowball into a complaint to DHS which could result in the "entrepreneur" having to leave the country"
I don't know if you believe this to be true. How would this work?
VC: We have a complaint!
DHS: Yes?
VC: The entrepreneur wants to grant more options to their main people.
DHS: okay... so?
VC: Please dissolve the company, make my equity worth zero, and return this person to their country?
DHS: What?
VC: Good point, just make them turn their equity into MY equity and then kick them out
I just don't know what you imagine this rule to be. How do you think this works? On an H1b you can just fire the employee and they have to leave. I understand the mechanics of the power. For a VC and an entrepreneur, the VC has shares in a company that is run by the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur ALSO has shares in the company and always will even if they leave the country.
VC: Hey DHS, Entrepreneur lied about something 2 years ago just before/after he came here.
Entrepreneur: That was not a lie - that was marketing. Every business does it.
DHS: "Get out"
> For a VC and an entrepreneur, the VC has shares in a company that is run by the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur ALSO has shares in the company and always will even if they leave the country.
This is nice in theory, but in practice (especially in knowledge economy companies), the employees are the company - everything else is furniture, coffee machines, ping pong tables...
The VC can just start a new company with ideas stolen from the person they just kicked out. They can offer the (now unemployed) employees of the previous company slightly more equity and money then they would have received at the previous company.
I don't understand why you are defending a system like this.
Let's just understand what "the system" is in the first place.
Whether it is morally good or bad we can decide after we make sure we are talking about the same system.
It sounds like you are suggesting that DHS would kick out the entrepreneur if there was a falsehood on marketing materials?
I don't know what that example was supposed to illustrate so please clarify, because I don't think that is how it would work.
Secondly, I don't know under what conditions DHS is allowed to cancel visas.
But let's more on to the other matter, which is the relationship between the VC and the entrepreneur. You acknowledge that the "knowledge" is key, but you still think that they can replace the person who is running the company?
Finally, you agree that the person would still retain ownership in the company?
Suppose you're an Indian making 10k a year in India. Then you have an opportunity to make 60k in America so you go. Native born Americans get paid more than you but you understand that it's really an accident of geography and bad policy, but you don't care because the opportunity will help you break your family out of poverty and open up doors not possible in India. So you stay.
Why due to the accident if geography is an American entitled to a salary that an Indian would be willing to do for less? How is that fair?
> Why due to the accident if geography is an American entitled to a salary that an Indian would be willing to do for less? How is that fair?
I am not going to argue about "Fair" because it is a value judgment which depends on your moral and political predilections. This isn't the right place for such discussions.
However there is definitely no such thing as an 'accident of geography'. I see this all the time expressed as a implicit argument, which I believe to be a form of pre-scientific thinking that has crept into our world view.
Sperm cells are not randomly selected in some kind of bingo ball system in the ether when a woman is impregnated.
It is one of the least random things possible - the entire catalogue of back choices of your ancestors is present as part of that inception. All of history, culture, geography, must have been necessary for you to be born where you are born. If you think otherwise, then you must not believe evolution theory is real or you have to be compartmentalizing it away from the present somehow, as if it were theoretical pure math instead of an always present reality.
Those who were elected/hired to make foreign policy and immigration law do not have the word "fair" in their job description, or at least nowhere near the top.
I have a million dollars. I hire you to manage it for me. You decide that, you know, it's kind of lopsided that one person have all this money, so you distribute it to 99 others. Do you have the moral high ground in this situation?
That's a pretty weird assumption. There's not any direct relationship between the number of software engineering jobs and the number of (e.g.) housing construction jobs.
The question is WHICH X people should we let in. Should we let in X low skilled workers or X high skilled workers?
You could perhaps make the argument that the US should lower the TOTAL amount of people let into the country.
But if that is your argument, then there is no point in talking about software engineers. You should be worried about the construction workers wages that are being reduced.
The rule, as proposed, required foreign entrepreneurs to receive "significant investment of capital (at least $250,000) from [investors]" or "significant awards or grants (at least $100,000) from [the government]" to demonstrate "potential to have accelerated growth" and job creation. The entire visa is based on the idea that startups have "significant public benefit".
'Indentured'? I call hyperbole. Quit, go home. That's something a true indentured servant couldn't do.
Its 'something like' indentured servitude, except it isn't. It isn't slavery either. Nor torture or any number of other emotionally laden words we could come up with.
Its an employment deal. Its an immigration option. Others exist. Don't choose it if you don't like it.
Educate us, which "others" exist? Also H1-B is a non-immigrant visa. You can petition for a green card after a few years, but there's no guarantee you'll get it.
I agree with the op, btw. To make things better for local workers, h1b workers should be offered greater mobility so as to create competition which properly values their skills. Earlier suggestion by the Trump administration that instead of a lottery only the highest paid h1b workers will be admitted sounds quite sane, too.
I dont think corporations profit from the H1B in an economic sense. Some can, but only very few: that is, copmanies whose H1B situation allows them to have a higher range of profits than other companies in the same space that wouldnt have access to the same visa.
If immigration where free, or almost free, then these companies would hire even more people, and all others would also do it. The amount of immigration the tech sector would have if people could go to the us, stay 6 months to acclimate, learn and pick jobs, would skyrocket and would increase the talent pool for companies.
The great supporter of such restrictions are the people that think their own wage would be reduced if more competition were brought up. And they would be right to fear that in the short term. In the longer term, lower wages would also mean higher profits, thus higher capital which would eventually rise wages again.
Any immigration policy is more often than not a problem of bias and misunderstanding from the public, and a matter of voters for the politicians.
When I think about entrepreneur visas, I think about people needing a ton of money (several hundred thousand USD, EUROs, GBPs, etc.) to come in and attempt to start a business. In a lot of ways it's simply buying your way into a country as a resident.
I didn't think about the aspect of people seeing VC funding; not self funded people.
Also, when I first read this article, I wondered what industry stood to gain from this move. Presidents are members of the 1% and their policies are dictated by the top income earners, not the opinions of most voters[0]. Although companies might publicly be against this, they must be secretly benefiting. Maybe big tech players don't want disruptive startups coming in and taking their markets?
Great post. So many things that are touted as evidence of our open-mindedness and generosity are actually motivated by the financial incentives they create for corporate owners at the expense of non-owners everywhere, including domestic workers, consumers, and the slave labor used to circumvent first-world labor and environmental standards (whether imported under restrictive visas, exploited due to their undocumented status, or employed in their native "lower-cost" nations).
While the plight of illegal immigrants and the stories of the lonely technical geniuses sorrowing as they fail to gain entry to the U.S. may be heartwrenching, make no mistake that the true interest of the powerful is keeping a labor force that is cheap and easily exploited. If you take away dubious immigration status, their employers lose that much authority over them.
I see correcting such conditions as Trump's primary interest. He is the epitome of "Don't hate the player, hate the game", and as a businessman who has tried many different things, he knows that there is a lowest common denominator effect in business. If your competitor is going to China and getting stuff made for a few cents, you are putting yourself at a major disadvantage by not doing so. You can't effectively compete if your manufacturing costs are significantly higher. Consumers assume that legal structures prevent unfair competition and exploitation by default, but this been slowly degraded under false political doctrines pushed by MegaCorps and wrapped neatly in the bow of egalitarianism.
Trump ran and won so that he could level the playing field. Trump's position, IMO, is "Make the rules bar exploitation of consumers and workers without breaking competition and entrepreneurship". This is a credible counter to the "trickle-down economics" theory of "Give owners as much money as possible and you'll get a share somewhere along the line", and that's the primary reason that the Republican power players hate him. Trump is offering a more fair route not by proposing government seizure/control, regimentation, or handouts (which are easy arguments to discredit), but simply by restoring the baseline rules of the marketplace that consumers take for granted.
Wait... I think you're confusing Trump's branding (leveling the playing field) with his actions. Mostly we've seen more of the same Wall St appointments and corporate boosterism from him that we've seen from our last 4 or 5 presidents.
His father inherited his money from his own father, who moved to the Klondike in order to dodge the German draft and became wealthy by running brothels catering to gold prospectors.
On the other hand, that's less than the investment funding I've seen to some folks on HN, and it's the same amount of capital that would be required if you wanted to open a McDonald's store [1]. But I think a majority of people would regard that as starting from a wealthy position, and certainly not bootstrapping anyway.
Good point. As far as I can tell the loan must have been around 1968 - 1971, and this inflation calculator [1] puts that at $7 Million in today's money.
Well, for one, he's not that kind of entrepreneur. He made his fortune by starting off extremely wealthy, and then expanded it by defrauding people and going deeply into debt, rather than producing anything of value.
He's a property developer which is very different to the average sv start-up and property development is lot more dodgy - and I am not just talking about Donald some of the stuff that came out in the candy brothers trial in the uk is quite shocking
Trump inherited his money and if he'd never started a business but invested it conservatively in index funds instead he'd have significantly more money than he does now.
Clearly you dont understand that people with 300 Million dont just put it into the market. That's why the whole Hedge Fund/Private Wealth Management industry exists. This argument is so far from reality.
Well, why don't they? Is the market not large enough to take 300 million invested via ETFs? Is it factually incorrect that if Trump had invested in the market, he would have made more money than he did actively managing it?
More importantly, if I have the choice between roughly equivalent outcomes where one consists of decades of busywork and the other consists of taking a small part of the money and doing good in the world, why in the world would I want to be building a real estate empire?
Of course, for Trump the reason would be because he's a narcissist who needs to see his sense of self-worth boosted by seeing his name slapped onto buildings in giant letters and his face in the news. But for someone who wants to merely lead a good life? You take out however much you need to actually make a positive impact, and leave the rest in index funds.
That said, I'm not rich so I don't understand the system and why things need to be the way you describe. Please provide some insight.
