Idiocy and brilliance of American policy toward entrepreneurs

And why you should be wary of sound-bite-driven public policy: while most reasonable people will agree that the MIT-educated top Burmese scholar should be able to work in the US, nobody has proposed a mechanism to extend a visa to her that isn't fraught.

The "Startup Visa" program Scoble pumps here is a good example. It designates --- officially --- a specific class of financier as a gatekeeper to immigration.

The US H1-B program is actually less freighted with conflicted and/or incoherent incentives than the VC-centric "startup visa" (if you lose your H1-B job, you at least have several overtly specified options to change your status and get another H1-B spot without dealing with the cap). And the H1-B program is notorious.