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Comment by pandaman | Hacker News Reader

The article is advocating for increasing H1-B caps. I wonder what does H1-B (a non-immigrant visa, which does not allow running your own business) has to do with immigrants founding billion dollar startups other than them using it to acquire cheap labor?

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Because many of them came to the US to study because of being able to work here through the OPT/H1/GreenCard/citizen route. Same with many top professors, researchers and tech execs like Nadella, Gundotra, Pichai etc.And many people on this list too like the inventor of USB etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_Americans

The three people you listed are not known for founding billion dollar startups. They are known as employees of Google and Microsoft (unless you meant somebody else with the same last names as Google and Microsoft CEO and Google's former VP of engineering).

Alright. Let me list down some immigrants who came here on H1B visa.

1. Jyoti Bansal - Founder of AppDynamics The guy in the above mentioned article was on H1B.

2. Kevin Systrom - Cofounder of Instagram was on H1B visa.

3. Jay Scaler - Founder of ZScaler an unicorn, was on H1B visa

4. Vinod Khosla - Founder of Sun Microsystems and well known VC was on H1B visa initially

Will list down some more in some time.

> 2. Kevin Systrom - Cofounder of Instagram was on H1B visa.

I don't think that's correct.

He probably meant the other cofounder Mike Krieger. http://www.businessinsider.com/instagram-cofounder-mike-krie...

In fact H1B has to work for an employer and can not founder a company(at least easily or legally), you have to earn your permanent residence first, which takes quite a few years at least.

Yup.

It's a shitty system that locks you in to working for other places for years.

Correct. Many don't come right away to make a startup, they work, get contacts&experience and then the startup appears.

By "Jay Scaler" do you mean Jay Chaudhry?

>Vinod Khosla - Founder of Sun Microsystems and well known VC was on H1B visa initially

The H-1B visa was created in 1990. Khosla started working in the U.S. in 1980 after graduating from Stanford, and founded Sun in 1982. It seems doubtful he was ever on an H-1B.

> Same with many top professors, researchers and tech execs like Nadella, Gundotra, Pichai etc.And many people on this list too like the inventor of USB etc.

Some of them might have, but the H1B is an awful avenue for this. You are not allowed any side businesses while you are employed on an H1B visa (and you can't be self employed using it). If you are Indian, you are looking at what is currently an 11 year processing delay before you can get a green card, not counting the time it takes to get your H1B initially. If you're from other countries, the backlog is shorter, but it is still multiple years before you can leave your company to try self employment.

Assuming you get approved for a green card. It's possible to get an H1B and then get denied for a green card.

Academics and other similar figures of note can already apply directly for a green card, which I suspect many of the people on this list have done. If you want to expand immigration, a simpler, faster path to permanent residency is essential.

> If you want to expand immigration, a simpler, faster path to permanent residency is essential.

Comprehensive immigration reform was supposed to do that, adopting a more streamlined points system like Canada and Australia, but of course the bill ended up covering amnesty for undocumented immigrants too and the whole thing got shot down.

Unfortunately for most people an H1-B is the best path to a green card, and only once you have a green card are you free to be an entrepreneur etc.

Yes, as a Canadian working in the USA on an H1B, I am painfully aware of this fact.

The point remains: Increasing the number of H1Bs will not have a great impact on the number of founders, especially not in the short term, because the vast majority of them will end up shackled to an employer for years.

The real reform would be to unshackle H1B's. Sadly, in today's political climate, I don't think that's likely.

Increasing H1B caps does help immigrant founders who aren't already millionaires. I've been on an H1B visa and I've started my own startup. You can be on an H1B for your own company so long as it's clear there is a board that can fire you.

There's two ways to go about making it easier for immigrant founders to work legally in America: create a new startup visa class that is likely ridiculously nebulous, or increase the H1B cap. I think the second is much more likely to pass.

There are more ways. For example, preventing bodyshops like Tata et al from taking all visas every year. While it's profitable to abuse the system the system is going to be abused. It's not like USCIS is oblivious to what's going on, if it were told to enforce the law, I am pretty sure, it would have complied.

Maybe, but the cap is so oversubscribed now that even if they were banned, and even if the 1/3 of the H1B visas those kinds of consultancies take went to someone else, there's still no more guarantee you'd make the lottery/cap.

This year Infosys, Tata, Wipro and IBM submitted more than 65000 applications [1] (which is the current cap). And these are not the only bodyshops in the running. If the law had been enforced then there had been plenty of H1-Bs to go around the year (or, at least till October/November) without a lottery like it always happens in the years when the "consulters" get cut due to poor economy.

1. http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2016-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx

Also an H1-B doesn't exactly let you quit your sponsor and start your own company.

H1-B is actually a "dual-intent" visa and is often used for people on non-immigrant visas to move towards getting a green card.

I suggest you read the H1-B entry at wikipedia. "Dual intent" does not make it an immigrant visa, it just allows you to get one without proving the lack of immigration intent.

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