US Immigration System Sucks, if you are a Founder

A country needs to figure out what elements it wants to excel in (services, manufacturing, high-tech, etc.) and then make policies that will drive people towards those industries, regardless of where they are from.

The US system is rather agnostic (it seems equally hard for a day-labourer as a top-notch scientist to get in) as a result - the people needed are difficult to identify and woo into the country.

Canada has an interesting method to this - and is relatively open to immigration: use a point system. (want to figure out YOUR score?: http://www.workpermit.com/canada/points_calculator.htm

If you're a PHD, add 25 points - a high school grad? add 10 points...and so on. In the end, the process is relatively transparent and helps potential immigrants realize they are needed.

In the US, as part of the immigration process - they will go through intense questioning on very relevant matters such as "Were you ever a member of the communist party?" "Are you a terrorist?" - both questions were asked of me dring the immigration process. But no one even asked if I had a high school diploma....hmm.

H1B: (the most popular) This Visa let you be hired from your company. So you can be the CEO, CTO or a developer of your company. It lasts 5 years, then you can extend it.

Not entirely true.

1. The Visa is for 6 years (in 2 3-year segments). Furthermore, you can't extend it unless you have legitimate reasons for it (for eg. if you are waiting on your GC to be approved).

2. It's very hard to be hired by your own company, especially for startups. He does allude to this in his "Cons" section but there is more to it - For a firm to hire a H1-B the business itself needs to prove that it actually has such a need. Furthermore, its needs to prove it's own viability via a business plan, a tax statement (that shows that it makes $x in revenues each year) etc. The latter portion is hard for a startup - since they may not have any revenues yet.

3. The 5 year time range (for getting a GC) is random at best - It all depends on the country of origin of the immigrant. People from certain countries can enroll in the GC lottery process and potentially get lucky (I have a friend who went this route). For most people from China/India it usually is on an average 5-6 years (a EB-2 classificatio. EB-3 takes longer, while EB-1 is usually very fast, but a very small portion of the population can apply in that category)

4. He's right about having the right salary. You need to pass labor certification when getting a H1-B (or a GC for that matter). I don't know enough about part-time H1-Bs so I can't comment on it

Why to look for being directly paid by US company? Why not to establish local company and outstaff yourself to it? It's even possible to save on taxes in some cases. Getting B1 visa is not so complex and it allows to stay in US long enough to hold all crucial meetings and then return in 3-6 months.

Yes, this approach has a lot of inconveniences. But it's much more doable than knocking on the closed door.

Please don't let any more of these type of people in. Its too good here already.

Isn't it's a time to realize that there is no need to relocate into US, moreover, it is, perhaps, much better to work with US-bound project but to live, say, in India, Thailand, Nepal and other clean and friendly places..

Isn't a entire history of emergence and development of Linux kernel (and related OSes) is a self-evident case study?

50% of the children in born in the U.S. today are Black or Hispanic.

Unless you know of a way to fix all the problems in Black and Hispanic populations that seem to keep them from having any significant presence in professions requiring an education or IQs over 120 (and we've tried to fix those problems for 150 years now), the U.S. will be Brazil in 20-30 years.

Educational reform has moved the Black-White gap maybe 1/5th of a standard deviation over the last several decades. And that was the easy part. Honestly, the rest is probably genetic, and simply won't budge even if you turn the public schools into sharashkas.

Good luck, all. The demographic ball is too big to stop now, even if every state turned into Arizona tomorrow. The moving hand has written. Enjoy your bowls of red.

P.S.

If you are now busily writing me 50 reasons why the black-white gap isn't genetic, don't bother. That was an aside and irrelevant to the central point. What matters is that it's something that seems impossible to shift with current methods even when vast resources sluice against the problem over many years. And you only have 20-30 years to come up with a solution. Smart money is way against you.