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Comment by anindha | Hacker News Reader

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?

>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.

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

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