Trump plans to halt entrepreneur visas | Hacker News Reader

Trump plans to halt entrepreneur visas

axios.com

64 pointselsewhen49 comments

His top advisor complained that Silicon Valley had too many Chinese CEO's, so this isn't surprising. It'll be interesting to see which country takes our place as the 'brain magnet.'

>“When two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think...” Bannon said. “A country is more than an economy. We’re a civic society.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/steve-bannon-disgusted-a...

I find it very interesting, the constant A/B tests that Trump is keen on.

Nobody rational would dare to upset the entrepreneurship in US, so I kinda want this to happen, just to see how this will play out.

Granted, I'm not planning to move to US really soon, so I might be biased, but I've really wanted for Brexit to happen and I'm EU.

That is turning out as a disaster, just like rational people suggested. Trump has yet to truly permanently fuckup something so I started to wonder if I was wrong. I see that we're keeping our options open.

The only clear consistency in his policy is undoing everything Obama did. It's really weird and petty.

That was his campaign platform. Why is keeping promises weird or petty?

It's absolutely petty. The job of president is to do whatever is best for the country, not to resolve grievances against the previous president by getting revenge at the expense of the country.

And there are plenty of promises that Trump isn't keeping.

is it proper to do what is right for the country even if that is opposite of what your campaign promises were and opposite of what the elextorate wanted? genuinely curious. not american, live in asia, so quite impartial

Yes, it is. Previous presidents have had no problem doing what was right over upholding campaign promises (many of which quickly became outdated). It also doesn't help that many of Trump's campaign promises, like bringing back coal jobs or dictating Mexico's national construction budget, were completely impossible to uphold anyway. So we knew going into this anyway that a lot of his campaign promises were just lies to get elected, so he's going to break many of them anyway; upholding the petty ones that hurt the country while breaking all the rest is not redeeming, it's just shit layered on top of other shit.

What is an ethical framework that respects a candidate's motivation to promise impossible things in order to get elected? You can say, "duh, politicians lie," but this would seem to me to be well beyond that. Think of the implications, when the winner of an election can just say "lol jk."

I don't know. I'll tell you my ethical framework as a voter though -- be pragmatic and vote for whichever one is best, or least worst. Clinton wasn't as willing to make baseless promises as Trump was, which I think may have cost her. The audience she appealed to was also less willing to accept baseless promises, however.

> vote for whichever one is best, or least worst

What does "is" mean there, when what is apparent is based on lies? Frankly I'm disappointed that you identify a failure of Clinton as not having lied enough. That is not the foundation of a government I want to survive.

Me neither. I'm not saying she should've lied more, I'm saying it's sad that that might have been to her advantage. The real problem is the media and the electorate just cannot handle a serial liar like Trump.

[Presumably] There is a massive volume of information that one gains access to when one is elected President. It would (and does) scare me that President Trump seems to be entirely unaffected by the realities of his new position.

I really doubt it. Sure one learns details, but all the evidence points to there being no game-changing secrets that the hoi polloi are not privy to. That said, perhaps when you become president people close to you try to see to it that gaps in your knowledge are filled, and Trump may have had especially many.

> Sure one learns details, but all the evidence points to there being no game-changing secrets that the hoi polloi are not privy to.

All of what evidence?

And, for that matter, what "hoi polloi?" Surely you're not implying that every wealthy person in the US is fully aware of every US government secret and classified operation.

"Hoi polloi" was an ill-chosen term since of course wealthy people are included in those who do not know the secrets one learns on becoming president.

As for the evidence, one thing is that there have never really been any leaks about game-changing secrets. The closest thing to that, at least in recent memory, is the Snowden revelations. They fall more in the category of confirming one's worst fears than being shocking. (Also, they are a bit of an odd example in this context because they are about things the US government is itself doing, not things about the world that US intelligence has discovered. Admittedly, if there had been equally shocking secrets of the latter variety they would have been less likely to have been leaked by an American because while surely the public has a right to know about and have a chance to approve of or not secret programs of the government (and this right has been and continues to be violated), it is much less clear when a secret known to the US government (perhaps discovered by one of its intelligence programs) must be disclosed to the public. (If the government is negotiating with aliens, I guess the public has a right to know about it before it goes on too long, but if it has a superspy in Russia or China that is providing shockingly detailed intelligence, not so much.)

Presidents' behavior does change versus what they probably honestly expected it would be, but the major changes seem to me to be reactions to public, not secret, information. For instance, Bush's plan for the presidency was radically reshaped by 9/11. And his invasion of Iraq was sold partly on the basis of their being intelligence about WMD, but this is sort of an anti-example since there wasn't any compelling intelligence (and moreover, in my view, it was pretty clear at the time based on public information that whether or not Saddam had a few chemical weapons squirreled away, he didn't have a hugely threatening WMD program, certainly not in comparison to North Korea or even Iran). Also, presidents probably often misjudge what they can politically do (e.g., Clinton promised to end the ban on gays in the military but ended up being forced into don't ask don't tell, or Obama promised to close Guantanamo failed because of bipartisan opposition and perhaps a failure of nerve or unwillingness to "expend political capital").

It's not the promises that are petty, it's the goal.

Keeping promises is not weird or petty.

Making petty promises is.

Yet he was elected by people for these petty promises

NPR had a good story the other day about the coalition of Trump's voter's, and how different the groups are. There were definitely those who voted for him and didn't expect him to keep his promises (promises that didn't make sense to most people with knowledge of economics), just to keep Hillary from winning.

http://www.npr.org/2017/07/02/535240706/study-no-one-issue-c...

Completely agree. We will most likely have 16 years of an unproductive government that does not work for it's people. When Obama got elected, republicans opposed him and tried everything to make him a one term president. We now have Trump who is constantly being opposed by democrats and some of his own party. Nobody has passed any real meaningful change in the last 8 years and potentially the next 8 years. I think congress and senate are ridden with lifelong politicians who are only looking out for their interests. Thank god for private sector, we at least have companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple. I feel we need to have a real debate about what is working and what is not working about our current government, redefine the role of government for a new world. I don't see how the current setup will set us up for success against rising economies like China, Russia and India.

I sometimes feel like we got stuck with an early beta version of democracy (winner takes all elections, single candidate voting, no restriction on campaign durations, etc), with no easy upgrade path because politicians don't want to change a system that works for them. It's really frustrating to see how dysfunctional things have become, it's like a company that is more focused on politics and infighting than results, like Microsoft during the stack ranking days.

> We will most likely have 16 years of an unproductive government that does not work for it's people

Millions of Americans have access to health care today that they simply did not have before the Affordable Care Act was passed. That is not unproductive, that is profoundly beneficial for real people.

Throwing up your hands because "politicians" does nothing to fix the problems with a party completely unwilling to govern in a role of governance. Demanding that your Congressperson and Senators fight for meaningful change for Americans will make a real difference. Start there.

> Nobody has passed any real meaningful change in the last 8 years and potentially the next 8 years.

There is plenty of meaningful change in the last 6 months, it's just not positive change. But it definitely is meaningful. It will take a decade or more (probably more) to repair the harm done to the USA both at home and abroad.

you misspelled "destructive and regressionist"

> I find it very interesting, the constant A/B tests that Trump is keen on.

I think he's not doing A/B testing, he's just random…

As discussed previously [1], this is good given how unattractive the visa rules were in the first place :

> 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?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14606478

Hold up: this is a rule that is a few months old and has never actually been implemented.

Trump does not want to implement it.

So it changes absolutely nothing except a counterfactual future in which it helps create more jobs.

I don't think it's a good idea to not implement it - it would allow an additional 2,940 entrepreneurs into the US each year - but important to note it changes no existing policy.

If you read the article, this is for a rule that was to take effect middle of this month. So it shouldn't be impacting anyone yet. I guess we will have to wait and see what his long terms plans are...

In addition, the agency is expected to start the formal process to eliminate the rule. A USCIS spokesperson said the rule is "under review."

Interesting to note as well that under Trunp's executive order, for every new rule, two must be rescinded. Which two? Conversely if two are being rescinded, for which new rule is taking their place?

This is sad for the US. But I do wonder if, on the whole, this is a good thing. I've always wondered if the US's largest "foreign aid giving" is not the actual measly sum of money it gives, but rather just kicking out high-skilled workers, sending them back to China, India and elsewhere.

I imagine it's a boon for those developing countries. Instead a natural brain-drain, the country doing the draining is stopping it. I'd love to hear some stories about entrepreneurs who wanted to come to the US, but had to go elsewhere and ended up building large businesses. I do see a lot of cool startups coming out of India (that we use for our startup, like Chargebee and VWO) - I wonder if they would have been tempted to start them here in the US if it were trivial for entrepreneurs to enter.

Perhaps a rare case of the road to heaven being paved with bad intentions.

Swamp the drain?

sending them back to China, India and elsewhere

I doubt they're going back to China or India. Far more likely is that they're coming to Canada or going to Australia or Europe.

We have tons and tons of Chinese people coming to Canada to go to school. It's not a stretch to see them setting up shop here after they graduate. Wealthy Chinese families recognize how safe they are in the West. They don't mind paying high taxes to get away from the CCP.

True. Some will go other places like you mention and some will remain in their home countries.

In any case, it's not just having talent go to developing countries that I see as a positive, but also seeing other countries' increasing tech scenes. I think having geographical diversification in the tech world is healthy. For starters, if one country ever elects a leader that wants to attack tech and automation as aggressively as the US leadership is attacking immigrants, then human technological progress will be less affected.

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