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I don't get why so many people are attacking Vivek. Step back from trying to eval() every single tiny detail to death. The bigger point here is that he is helping shine a light on a huuuuuge pain for immigrant founders in the US that hasn't gotten much attention (or a solution), all this while. Why is that a bad thing?

The DEA has been cracking down on druggies since forever, and it's been beating the same drum ever since. Such a boring agency, find a new pet theme already. People already know drugs are bad, right? If it's not for people like Vivek, who else is going to get the attention of someone who has the political power to change the laws? All you naysayers?

The old adage holds: It doesn't matter what you good do on this planet, there will always be small % of people who attack you no matter what.

Disclosure: I went through the painful F-1, then H-1B route, and now that I have my (conditional) green card, now life begins: I'm burning my savings building a startup in Silicon Valley (hello Hacker Dojo!)

p.s. apologies for the slightly inflammatory comment, I generally don't get myself into frickin' drama on the internets, but this is a topic that hits a very very very sore spot for me, and I couldn't just not say anything.

Your stance seems to be that, because Vivek's piece agrees with you on a topic you feel strongly about, it doesn't matter if it's a lousy article that fails to make the point effectively. But you of all people should care about the article's ability to convince people who aren't already on board with your "bigger point." It's a bad thing because you do a disservice to your cause when you let people off the hook for making a persuasive argument just because they agree with you. It makes it look like you can't actually substantiate your position. If you're right, you should be harder on Vivek than anyone else to get him to make the point effectively.

Your point is perfectly valid, and maybe I should be harder on Vivek to make him better and what he is doing, because it's supposedly self-serving (although I should point out that I'm hardly a beneficiary of any such gains now, since I have already got past that immigration hurdle, as I have already mentioned above).

You're accusing me of siding with him because I agree with his point. When was the last time you sided with someone you didn't agree with?

That aside, you've dragged me down into debating a point smaller than the big picture I've just pointed. But I'll entertain you.

Again. We have a big problem. Only people with power to fix it can fix it. These people aren't doing anything. We need to get their attention. To get their attention, we need both "quantity" (more people saying it) and "quality" (sell the case better). You're arguing that I'm soft on the latter.

Sure, everything in life could be better. Just 1 more penny to my stock option price. Just one CSS tweak before I won't be embarrassed to show the public my prototype. The perfection argument means people don't ship.

Right now, we need more quantity. All these attacks on Vivek is hardly encouraging to the masses that reads it to also voice up and help with quantity. I'm not saying quality is not necessary. I'm pointing out that people are so focused on nitpicking on the finer details, but I don't see them getting of their lazy asses and doing anything about it that's actually moves the needle.

It's so easy being an arm-chair analyst. Let's see the naysayers do better than Vivek. Don't just say it - prove it. All this bickering don't do shit. Show me the money. Like in startups, everything's an assumption/hypothesis until you prove it.

I think you misunderstand. My point is exactly the point you're making in the last paragraph: Everything is speculation until you prove it, and this article does not prove much of anything. I'm not the one claiming that we have "a big problem," so I have nothing to prove. If you want to see change, it's up to folks like you and Vivek to show the rest of us the money.

I don't mean to sound hostile or bicker. I'm just saying, this is how influencing people works. If you want people to believe something, you need to convince them, not count on them to convince themselves. If your argument is unconvincing, it's in your interest to fix that, not berate people for noticing its weaknesses. Think of it like selling investors on your startup.

If you want to change things, making a strong case that convinces people they need to invest in your cause is probably a more efficient route than fumbling in front of a greater number of VCs. With a few exceptions, people who stand on street corners shouting things that they can't prove tend to destroy their credibility.

I think you are either missing the point, or not taking in to the account the fact that the restrictive immigration laws here are preventing or delaying possible entrepreneurs (like me) from startups that could create markets, challenge today's tech titans and create jobs. I am not saying we all end up directly creating hundreds of jobs, but the impact a startup has, or its technology has, and its story reverberates far beyond the startup cease to exist.

I can speak for my own. Because it has taken me 7 years since my initial Green Card filing, I have had to put on hold several times the idea for a startup even though I see the tremendous talent around me who I can lasso together an idea, even if there are no earth shattering ideas at the moment. The right minds do not come together that often, ideas are actually quite cheap. And as I struggle myself with whether to create a startup on an EAD (the Temp Work permit before a GC), and potentially jeopardizing my GC, I see others around me going through the same pattern. And its frustrating to say the least.

Startup Visa should have been a reality long before Immigration became all mired down in the Illegal Immigration debate.

I have been lurking, reading on these forums till now, and I thought I should speak my mind on this topic.

I don't want to hijack this thread or the merits in your comment. I've been in the US 15 years now and in the same stage as you without a green card. (on EAD) When I got my EAD 2 years back, I quit my full time gig and went contracting to save up some money. A month back, I quit my contract gig to do my own startup. In spite of the fact that immigration sucks in US, you have to pursue your dream too. It all depends on how badly you want it.

in which he shows detailed figures for NET immigration flows into and out of the United States in comparison to countries like China and India?

Funny, I was just coming to the comments page to say exactly this. The linked post is conspicuous for its lack of words like "study" or "statistics." Talking to a couple of random people does not qualify a trend that stretches to millions of people.

It's pretty obvious that the U.S. immigration system is fucked up and should be much improved. But you can't jump from that to the conclusion that so many immigrants are going home as to affect Silicon Valley.

That's the thing, it doesn't have to affect a lot of people to be a big problem. Founders are pretty valuable, keeping even a small number of them out with artificial barriers is bad thing, since the alternative (letting them in) does not seem that daunting (unless you fear foreign founders for some reason).

It isn't about US vs. India immigration. It is about US immigration vs. the cost/effort of starting up a company in India (by an Indian citizen).

No one's competing at this point to make it easier for "young people from African countries... to emigrate to those other countries". The low-hanging fruit is people of Indian/Chinese/whatever origin returning to their homeland and starting up the next big thing there, instead of the US.

In general, I agree with the article in that the US immigration policy is rather arrogant. It may have made sense at some point in the past, but with the distribution of opportunities changing, the US needs to make a better sales pitch.

Ahem... Starting another groupon clone in India is not necessarily a next big thing.

Would this argument make sense if we had a "Google clone"?

There's a market to be tapped, and they seem to be doing just that. One wonders why this is even possible, and if Groupon's dropped the ball in India. Regardless, they're running a business. What's not to like?

Many Silicon Valley start-ups are incredibly derivative, but a flip is still a flip.

It would have made more sense if it was not a country-specific clone of anything, i.e. if it really was a "next big thing", not a regional adaptation of what's big in the U.S.

Andy Grove's opinion made for an interesting, and imho persuasive, argument against this. Taking the laptop battery industry as an example - the outsourced manufacturers first made derivative products. Over time though, they achieved competence and finally mastery of the technology.

By opening the door and improving on what they had, even if it was a clone of something, they understood what had to be improved and finally dominated the market.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_28/b41860483...

In India it might be.

The point is job creation. Not novelty of business model.

The Groupon-for-India would've hired 250 employees here?? I think it's more likely those jobs would've been created in India, either by SnapDeal or Groupon's India business operations, since that's where the market for that service is.

Chile perhaps? Check out this government sponsored initiative:

http://www.startupchile.org/

Seems like the Ministry of Economy is really serious about attracting founders from outside Chile. Each founder gets a $40,000 dollar grant for a six month stay which includes some great mentoring along with basic office space. I believe there is no requirement to stay in Chile after the six months is up. I guess the Chilean government is just hoping you'll like it there so much you'll want to stay and continue to base your business there. I was a chatting with a friend just last night who lives in Santiago in Chile. He told me they are expanding the scheme this year to an intake of over 100. I have to say he made the lifestyle out there sound very tempting. He said you can live comfortably on $20,000 per year - perfect for a lean startup.

Made me seriously consider the possibility of applying and taking my new startup there:

http://www.mightycv.com

Well that's if they'd have me of course.

If you think a spartan grad school life is comfortable (I do ), it's easy to live in Boston on $20k a year, if you're intensely working on a startup around Davis Sq.

You can find his more data-focused writing here -- http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=7387...

It is difficult for foreigners to start companies in the EU, even modulo the fact that it's somewhat difficult for residents to start companies in parts of the EU.

I don't know anything about Asian immigration, but I know a very little bit about EU policies, and I don't think they're a competitive threat to us here.

Huh? This sounds totally wrong to me.

The UK and Germany, the two strongest EU startup countries, both already have founders visas and there's nothing special about a foreigner owning shares in a Ltd or GmbH, the respective equivalents of a US incorporation.

Also, in my experience, founding a UK Ltd is even easier than doing a US Inc if for no other reason than that you don't have to deal with both federal and state institutions as in the US. The stuff that the Companies House sends you is super straight-forward (impressively so, other countries should take note), and can be done mostly online. Germany is (surprise!) more bureaucratic and things take a bit longer, but it's still not rocket surgery.

On the whole immigration and getting permanent residence is much easier in both countries. The UK has a point system for highly skilled immigrants, and you can get permanent residence in both in 5 years without having had to stick around at a single employer.

I have several degreed acquaintances who were ejected from the UK and EU. I'm married to someone who immigrated to Switzerland for work. The impression from people I know is that it's not particularly easy to move to Europe from the US.

I'm not sure what you mean by state / fed institutions, unless you mean that you have to pay both state and federal income tax (... but so does everyone, whether or not they own a company). When we set up Matasano, the only thing I remember us having to do with fedgov was getting an EIN.

Incorporation in the US is done on a state level, not by the federal government; he was comparing incorporating in the US to the Ltd model in the UK.

Switzerland has a very restrictive immigration policy compared to other European countries.

Erin wasn't ejected from Switzerland; the most recent ejection instance happened to an acquaintance living in London.

The UK and Germany, the two strongest EU startup countries, both already have founders visas

Please tell us more. That's one of the reasons I asked the question I did up above, to find out more about what other countries are doing as a guide to what policy would be beneficial for the United States.

I did some Google searching, and one person who was responding to HN discussion of this issue on a blog mentioned the United Kingdom highly skilled worker visa,

http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/workingintheuk/tier1/gener...

and from that page I found out about the United Kingdom entrepreneur visa

http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/workingintheuk/tier1/entre...

and the United Kingdom investor visa.

http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/workingintheuk/tier1/inves...

But, what, exactly, is a United Kingdom founder visa?

I found a German government website about visas and browsed around, but what exactly is a German founder visa?

Please tell us more. I'd be delighted to hear from HNers who have actually made use of something just like the proposed founder visa for the United States to immigrate to some other country, if we have such people here.

The entrepreneur visa was the one that I was referring to in the UK, which has similar requirements (actually lower – access to £200k in capital) as the proposed US founder's visa.

The German setup is similar, requiring the creation of at least 5 jobs and €250k in capital (though exceptions can be made, and I know some who have gotten them):

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http://www.gtai.com/...

I personally came over on the equivalent of an H1B, which was, compared to the US, incredibly easy to obtain. Basically I had a job offer, which I'd found while in Germany on a tourist visa in Germany, and took the letter from my employer along with a couple other filled out forms up to the Foreigner's Office (Ausländeramt), and was issued a two-year visa on the spot. I'll just emphasize that again: I was granted an H1B equivalent on the same day that I applied for it. There's a bit of a song and dance of them saying that they couldn't find an EU person for the job, but that's mostly a formality that's just a matter of the person writing the employment letter knowing how to write it. After 5 years I was eligible for permanent residence, and didn't start a company until after that. Though I had two different jobs in that time, which would have reset the counter for me in the US.

This isn't to say that people don't ever get kicked out or fail to get visas – I don't think there's a country in the world where it's a joy to deal with immigration officials, but certainly comparing my own experience to folks that I've known that have done equivalent things in the US makes what I've gone through seem like a walk in the park.

I was JUST coming here, as someone who got two degrees in the US and went home to start an internet based company, to say that I opened this article and saw the name of the author - rolled my eyes and closed the window without even reading it.

How many times can you beat a dead horse ?

We get it. America is "losing it's edge" to emerging markets.

His articles have always been disappointing to me, as someone who has been through the immigration process and hoped that maybe he had more detailed figures to backup his assertions - which would help my case.

But he often doesn't.

It doesn't matter if you get it[], what matters is the people with the power to change the law hasn't.

[] unless you have the power to change the law or do something to actually substantially help, rather than just complaining because there's one entry on HN today that didn't meet your liking.

Startup Chile, for which he's an advisor, is probably the best example I've ever seen of what a nation can do to try to attract entrepreneurs.

Why's that?

Been discussed here a bit.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2240081

Basically, the program offers a $40k grant, which goes a long way in a lower cost country like Chile. Also, they model after the usual incubator stuff for helping entrepreneurs out.

Note that I said "best example I've ever seen of what a nation can do to try to attract entrepreneurs". That doesn't mean I think it's the best it could be, nor that I think it will work. I only think that it's the best I've ever seen.

If the US offered something on a similar scale (i.e. anyone accepted into ycombinator automatically gets a work visa, basically), I imagine that the US would have a huge edge in comparison. But the US isn't doing that right now, or definitely isn't advertising it worldwide like Startup Chile is trying to do.

edit: And maybe the US isn't doing that because it doesn't need to because the world still sees Silicon Valley as the peak. Time will tell. I'm only saying that if you compared policies apples to apples, and only policies, Chile's policies win out.

Has it worked? What have the outcomes been? Is it too early to tell conclusively, and, if so, what are the metrics we can look at in the interim? What's a fair basis for comparison? Other South American countries? Smaller cities in the US?

i wonder if he's using the emigration argument to try and convince people to support this, or at least get their attention. i'm not sure if people will get behind the founder frustration argument, but if people think jobs are at risk they might be swayed more easily. i thought the argument was pretty convincing in the story--you saw more than half the people in that room raised their hands when asked if they thought they might move back or get kicked out of the country.

you don't have to look at stats to realize how frustrating this is for startup founders. anyone who has done a startup with an international cofounder (i've done one where both my cofounders were international), you know how much of a pointless hassle this is. you can look for stats on this and it may or may not show the severity of the emigration problem, but this is a real and frustrating thing to deal with. it's just the wrong thing founders should be worrying about.

personally, i don't think this will cause a major increase in emigration (although it's hard to define "major"), but you're forcing students who would prefer to do a startup to go work for a large company (one that will sponsor their visa) out of school.

You should look at the H1B numbers. Close go 120000 people apply for it and uscis selects 65000 people by lottery. E eery single person who makes it through has at least a degree in the areas they work on. These people leave their homes and friends and everything they know back home in hopes of making a better living. Does that ring a bell from history? However the h1b visa restricts them to one company and the same job till they get a green card which may arrive after 8 years. Once they get a green card many folks start companies of some sort.

Folks who don't get h1b or green cards often apply for Australia, U.K or Canada. Recent additions to the list are Germany, Scandinavian countries(petroleum), Dubai, Singapore, brazil. Many of these countries offer a comparable standard of living, and government incentives for immigration and establishment of businesses. Also some cities in india and china are fast becoming vc magnets. There may be a day soon when venture capital too gets Bangalored.