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Comment by austenallred | Hacker News Reader

About 50% of the biggest Silicon Valley companies were created by immigrants, so I’d be careful before claiming that Silicon Valley is an “American” invention and that the value should accrue to “Americans,” unless your definition of “American” includes immigrants.

If an immigrant comes here and starts a company or helps make a company successful even the native-born Americans are better off. IMO that’s the most American thing that can possibly happen, and if we should be terrified at the thought of it happening somewhere else instead.

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What percentage were created by H1Bs? I think you're conflating "immigrant" with "H1B visa holder". The two are not the same. Many of us who are critical of H1B and similar visa programs are very much in support of immigration in general.

I don't love the way H1Bs are structured either, but the notion that "Americans created it we should keep it" is silly.

Of course, H1Bs can't start companies, so that's not a very good way to look at things - if you don't legally allow category x to do y how many xs are going to do y? A better question is how many could.

But let's just talk about employees. I know I've worked at companies in the past in which the backbone of the work (not all of it, but an important part) was done by H1Bs, and we wouldn't have been able to complete that work and be solvent without the (brilliant) folks that had come over on H1Bs doing it. Those, say, 25 H1B jobs created jobs for hundreds of other folks.

So I'm just wary of thinking that everything is a zero sum game or that immigration is "taking jobs" of "Americans."

And you wonder why companies can't be assed to re-train the workforce.

Because training is expensive and hard and not what companies have traditionally done.

I run a school, and we have had employers pay for training of dozens of employees. It happens quite frequently.

US companies used to always train their employees. It was the cost of doing business.

The reason they do not do so now is because employees, for obvious reasons, have no loyalty to companies, and tend to jump ship after being trained. But again, this is because US companies changed from a lifetime model of employment to layoffs and offshoring for quarterly stock bumps.

Force companies to use domestic labor, create a culture where employees aren't constantly worried they'll be canned the next time sales are low, and I bet you'll get good employees who would be willing to learn and stay for the long-term.

Worth it? I doubt it.

It's a supply chain issue. Software engineer demand might spike unexpectedly, and for startups, that might mean growing from a handful of employees to a hundred in a short period of time.

Can that startup afford to relocate or remotely train a couple hundred out of work Americans for say, a year, pick the top half of those, and offer them packages?

Maybe? Would a year's training be enough? I don't know, but I doubt it's cost effective for spiky demand in labor.

This sort of supply issue should best be solved by the government, which has a vested interest in the employment of its taxpayers, or an NGO or some other organization. Not the companies in question.

Elon Musk was on a H1B when he started his first company.

> What percentage were created by H1Bs?

Well H-1Bs are generally prohibited from doing any paid work outside their current employer. So it would be a miracle if that number was non-zero. But it's still not. Zenefits co-founder Laks Srini had to be hired as a database administrator on an H-1B so that he could leave his previous employer [1].

It seems unfair to say people on visa programs don't become entrepreneurs when, in most cases, they legally aren't allowed to.

1. https://www.computerworld.com/article/2852250/it-outsourcing...

People complaining about H1B visa aren't (generally) complaining about the people on the visas themselves, they are complaining about the system of H1B visas itself.

There might be a reason for many of those not being H1B holders. If you are H1B holder your ability to stay in country is tightly bond to your employer. You are completely dependent on your employment to stay legally in US and hardly have any wiggle room where you can quit your job and try entrepreneurship for a while if nothing works out go back to applying for another job. The visa policies should be in place for both of the cases where deserving people from other countries get funding and deserving americans get jobs at fair compensations.

You can start a company on H1B as a minority shareholder, it's technically feasible.

I don't think it's straightforward to create a company with a H1B, because of a chicken and egg problem.

Typically you create it with an E2, which let you issue E2 visas for 3-4 other people. Then either you die, sell, or start issuing J1, later converted in H1B. H1B is generally too risky, being bound to a lottery, and that's the last thing you want at an early stage startup.

>>What percentage were created by H1Bs?

Start ups are largely built on sweat equity. The kind of monthly salary most H1Bs generally work on. That comes with a risk. Most immigrants take it anyway because they start from 0 and you can only grow from there. If enough people do this enough number of times, eventually the system will always product a Google or Microsoft.

So ultimately its about who is ready to work for cheap.

And how many are immigrants because of a program like this? When we call that 51% number we're including people like Musk and Thiel.

I really, really want to stress this: this program and VCs support of it has nothing to do with helping immigrants. There are tons of people already here who are immigrants and who want to start companies. This program exists purely to allow VCs to buy more equity with less. It's about driving American investment down because american equity is expensive relative to the rest of the world.

I don't understand your point about Elon Musk and why he shouldn't be included in the the 51%?

he can be considered second generation immigrant - thiel was very young when he moved. For musk, it's different, he seem to have come to states at a later age.

Because he didn't need a program like this to come here and found a company. My problem is that we're conflating the immigrants who will be brought here by the rule in the article with all immigrants who found companies. We've got 51% immigrant founding of Billion-Dollar+ companies already, VCs invest in immigrant founded companies already, America is already a great place for immigrant founders. The goal of this rule is not to help immigrants, it's to create them and its goal in creating them is to make it so VCs can buy equity cheaper. That is going to make it harder for everybody, immigrants included, who is already here and wants to acquire funding for their company.

Musk literally came here (and stayed in school) in hopes of getting an H1-B. He was on that path because it was the only way.

And yet he never got one, right? Regardless he certainly didn't need this International Entrepreneuer Rule. It sounds like Musk was perfectly able to found American companies and gain American citizenship without these special rules.

He did, reportedly. H1B -> EB2-Green Card -> U.S Citizen

He noted that he used several "grey areas" in order to get citizenship, effectively bending laws in ways they weren't meant to be used.

I know this is going to be incredibly unpopular but I'm against "grey areas" if that's an illusion to illegal immigration behavior. If that means Musk wouldn't have started his companies here, that's fine with me (tbh I don't think he could have founded them anywhere else.) There are plenty of americans who may have had a PayPal or Tesla level idea but just never got funding. I'd rather that VCs go hunt for those guys.

You really think that Tesla and SpaceX would have been started by someone else if Elon Musk weren't around?

I don't think that's true at all. The notion that if Elon Musk weren't around VCs would have given the cash to the next person in line who would have started those companies seems to just be patently false.

How about instead of forcing Musk to not start his company because our immigration laws are a little bit backwards we open them up and invite in all the other would-be Elon Musks?

Sure, but let's cut back all our other immigration first.

>You really think that Tesla and SpaceX would have been started by someone else if Elon Musk weren't around?

I think similar companies would have been founded yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_private_s...

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/40887273/ns/business-autos/t/new-c...

>I don't think that's true at all. The notion that if Elon Musk weren't around VCs would have given the cash to the next person in line who would have started those companies seems to just be patently false.

I don't see how you can declare that patently false. VCs like electric cars and space companies and there are others in the space so I'm sure they would be funded. Besides it's not just VC money Musk is sucking up, it's also billions in government subsidies. If Musk wasn't sucking up all this cheap money others would be.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015...

>How about instead of forcing Musk to not start his company because our immigration laws are a little bit backwards we open them up and invite in all the other would-be Elon Musks?

How about instead of inviting in a bunch of cheap Elon Musks from other countries we put a little bit of work into finding the Elon Musks that already exist here? Also, our immigration laws aren't backwards.

If there's another Elon Musk out there, I promise you VCs are throwing money at him.

This is our real difference, I have no such optimism. I believe there are probably hundreds of completely unknown Elon Musks in america right now, we've just done a horrible job at cultivating and finding human capital in our own country.

And I believe that for every Elon Musk in the United States there are 10 that are ready to come to the United States.

I also don't believe that capital is the sole limiting factor in finding these folks.

I guess I don't care that much what the limiting factor is. Finding the ones that exist in our own country is more important than importing cheap ones. I'll admit to having nationalistic tendencies though, we oughtta take care of our own Elons before we start worrying about the ones in other countries.

I think this really depends on the kind of businesses that VCs are pursuing. Many of the current wave of startups are directed at turning the poor into an app-directed servant class, or otherwise making their lives more difficult by intensifying problems like housing instability (e.g. AirBNB).

It becomes a zero sum game when the object is maximize the exploitation and vulnerability of the labor force. You’re right to say that it’s not an issue of immigrants vs natives. But rich vs. the poor in the US is becoming very “us against them.”

creating jobs is not exploitation, it's opportunity.

And that kind of thinking about work is dogma, not reasoned consideration.

It depends on the job, and it depends on the pay.

a permanent resident immigrant is definitely an American. it's important to distinguish between temporary guest workers and Americans who were born somewhere else.

It's worth calling out that a lot of "temporary guest workers" in SV are Indian and Chinese nationals who are "in line" to get permanent residence. It just happens that the line for India and China is really long: on the order of 9 years for Indian or Chinese masters degree holders (degrees from American unis), compared to less than 2 years for someone from another country.

A permanent resident is a green card holder not an American. It is difficult to obtain that status without a visa to begin with.

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