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Comment by porpoisely | Hacker News Reader

H-1B has nothing to do with Yahoo, Google or Tesla. Stop it. Blatantly lying doesn't add anything to the debate.

Jerry Yang and Sergei Brin immigrated to the US when they were children and they became citizens before they co-founded yahoo or google. Also, you leave out the fact that two of the founders of Google and Yahoo ( david filo and larry page ) were native born americans.

As for Elon Musk, his grandfather was american and he became an american citizen in 2002 before he founded tesla.

In other words, Yahoo, Google and Tesla were founded by american citizens.

You are intentionally conflating immigration with h-1b visas and lying about the founding of yahoo, google and tesla to push an agenda. That's disappointing.

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What visas did Lily Yang or Mikhail and Yevgenia Brin enter on? I think there's a fairly sound argument that we should be encouraging those, at least.

Elon Musk had Canadian citizenship and moved to Canada in order to enter the US on a student visa, with the goal of getting an H-1B. By the time he founded Tesla he had citizenship but he was certainly not a citizen when founding his first companies. There's no public documentation of what his status was, but it was likely either H-1B or TN. (He may also have overstayed his visa at some point.)

Well Elon undercut a home grown All American CEO by about $1B and suppressed CEO wages across the board so I don't know why you are so happy about it... \s

>What visas did Lily Yang or Mikhail and Yevgenia Brin enter on?

Not H1-Bs for sure, H1-B was introduced in 1990. As for Musk founding Tesla on H1-B : he founded it by investing his PayPal money in some startup so it's highly unlikely he had been on H1-B at the time (or ever). AFAIK you cannot get H1-B sponsored by a company you own and you have to work for the sponsor to remain in status. So who would have sponsored his hypothetical H1-B in 2003?

The exact visa doesn't matter. The point is, without immigration silicon valley wouldn't be silicon valley.

Then why bring the H1-B, a nonimmigrant visa for temporary workers, up when arguing about benefits of immigration ?

Because people who come in on H-1B are eligible to apply for green cards.

People who don't come in on H-1Bs are eligible to apply for green cards too. Being on H-1B does not make you eligible in any special way.

You are splitting hairs. They were all immigrants. Without immigration these companies would not exist. It doesn't matter if the visa they came in on was called H-1B or B1-H or whatever.

More than half of the most valuable U.S. tech companies were founded by first- or second-generation immigrants. See: https://www.recode.net/2018/5/30/17385226/kleiner-perkins-ma...

Immigrant Tech Entrepreneurs Creating Thousands Of Jobs In U.S., see: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2018/11/13/immig...

I'm not splitting hairs. I'm stating facts. There is a difference between immigration and h-1b visa. One is a process where people are moving to america to become american citizens. The other is a temporary work visa.

Also, I'm not against immigration. I'm for immigration. I'm against h-1b visas.

And misleading statements like "first or second-generation immigrants" is not helping your argument. By first or second generation immigrants, you really mean american citizens right? American citizens created those tech companies.

And it's great that US tech companies are founded by americans who immigrated to the US. Sadly, h-1b visas prohibit you from creating companies in the US. So your entire argument is contradictory.

H-1B is temporary work visa. It is the visa that is temporary, not the individual, because folks who come in on H-1B are LEGALLY allowed to apply for a green card, and once they get it they are permanent and can start their own companies.

H-1B visa is the reason silicon valley exists. Ask Mark Zuckerberg why he moved Facebook HQ to silicon valley. It is because that's where the engineers are. If H-1B didn't exist Zuckerberg would have moved considerable number of jobs to places like Beijing, Bangalore and St. Petersburg, because that's where he would have found software engineers.

People without H-1B visas are LEGALLY allowed to apply for green card. H-1B has nothing to do green cards. Green cards have existed for decades before H-1B visas were introduced in the 90s. I don't know why you keep lying about this when it is factually incorrect. People have been immigrating to the US before H-1B visas existed. Jerry Yang and Sergei Brin immigrated to the US before H-1B visas existed. They had green cards before H-1B visas existed.

Also, H-1B visas have nothing to do with silicon valley. They were created in 1990. Silicon Valley had existed for decades before 1990.

Zuckerburg already has offices and employees in beijing, bangalore, st petersburg with H-1B in place.

Everything you stated is an outright lie. Why are you doing that? There are plenty of ways to defend H-1B visas without resorting to lying.

He might be defending the value of immigration (and immigrants), not much the h1b. So I wouldn't accuse him or pushing an agenda because of that comment.

While Tesla might not exist without Musk, though he may be its soul, he also wasn’t a founder since those were Eberhard and Tarpenning.

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