A Visa for Job Creators | Hacker News Reader

A Visa for Job Creators

online.wsj.com

24 pointsmjfern17 comments

"Mr. Anderson, a former Immigration and Naturalization Service official, says the U.S. would do better to discard capital requirements and welcome any foreign national who can present a business plan that passes muster with the Small Business Administration."

The part about discarding capital requirements is a clear win, but why not go further and scrap the idea of having the SBA screen the business plans? It's an obvious place for the process to go Kafkaesque, and as step to keep people from gaming the system, it's easy to defeat. How about a visa for anybody who wants to come start a business here, period. (Maybe with the proviso that they're not allowed to draw welfare while on the visa.)

There are several hundred millions who would love to legally settle in the US. If the only requirement for a legal VISA would be to file a 99$ registration at sites like incorporate.com, there would be a flood of unproductive applicants with no real goal for their business other than getting a VISA. There has to be some sort of screening process.

"How about a visa for anybody who wants to come start a business here, period."

How about removing the employer sponsorship from H-1B and L-1 visas and converting them into general right-to-work visas? Then an H-1B/L-1 visa holder could start their own business without needing government approval.

Well in some fields every individual worker has their own business pro forma. So these would be harmed disproportionately by cheap immigrant competition. The capital requirement ensures that the new business is in competition with substantial existing companies.

Agreed; unfortunately, the people that will immediately imagine hordes of terrorists entering the country pretending to be entrepreneurs form a significant portion of the electorate.

I think in this case they're worried less about terrorists (who can be excluded on other grounds) and more about mass immigration in general. Simply requiring that you say you have a business plan is equivalent to having no requirements, since anyone can say that.

I'm pretty pro-immigration in general, but wouldn't it be more direct to just greatly increase the immigration quotas, rather than making people go through the charade of pretending to have a business plan? Either that, or if you want to insist that it be a real business plan and not a charade, you need someone to vet them.

How about giving you a deadline to actually create a business, maybe with some threshold of employment, revenue, cash, patent, or other tangible sign of value creation?

And then what?

Most people seem fixated on the problem of getting visas into the country. That's not the US governments problem. Their problem is once you're here you won't leave. This is how people get caught up. An immigrant comes in on a tourist visa, stays, decides to get a low paying job and now is stuck because clearing immigration means you won't be allowed to come back ever again.

So you get one of these visas, deadline comes and you've got nothing. So you stick around and become one of the millions of illegal immigrants. Deportation is a long, expensive process and the US taxpayer would rather not have to do it at all since it's very dirty work.

An interesting approach would be to

1) facilitate incorporating and running a business from abroad

2) allow short business trips for business owners

3) once business reaches a threshold, grant a special visa

But they already have that. They are investor visas and the only requirement is you have a large ($million) wad of cash and no criminal record.

[...] the only requirements is you have a large ($million) wad of cash

Precisely.

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Full article at the first result:

http://www.google.com/search?q=a+visa+for+job+creators

WSJ is cloaking

Thanks

why not just let anyone live anywhere?

Because that's the wrong kind of "globalization." Investor-oriented globalization is the kind where a wealthy person can move his factory to Mexico and demand many of the same rights he gets in the US; but a poor Mexican can't go to New York and do likewise. For more information:

http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/2006----.htm

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