Startup Visa Endorsed by US Chamber of Commerce's Center for Entrepreneurship | Hacker News Reader

Startup Visa Endorsed by US Chamber of Commerce's Center for Entrepreneurship

uschamber.com

What I'd prefer to see is a system similar to Canada's points system[1], which -- in summary -- gives you points for various qualifications, such as education, work experience, family ties, amount of capital you'd inject into the country, and various other metrics to decide whether allowing you into the country would be a benefit for society.

Special-casing startups wouldn't be needed -- you would get points for having investments into your company, and the skills needed to build it.

[1]http://www.workpermit.com/canada/points_calculator.htm

Can someone explain what this endorsement means? Higher chance it passes through congress?

Yep. Can use the endorsement to get folks in Congress to pay attention where they wouldn't otherwise.

Endorsements like this are a piece of the 'execute' pie necessary to get any 'good idea' through Congress.

If it's related to the Chamber of Commerce, chances are it's regressive policy.

Normally, I wouldn't disagree, but this is an offshoot for supporting entrepreneurship. Also, the libertarian arguments are there for Startup Visa: keep the government out of picking winners and let VCs use market-based metrics to decide which foreign entrepreneurs should get visas.

And the VCs (http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2011/03/the-startup-visa-act...) and entrepreneurs (https://www.votizen.com/issues/startupvisa/) both want this bill to pass.

Seems like this is getting a lot of support, though I do have some reservations. I don't really like the idea of allowing VCs to decide who is allowed to come to the US. Of course, I don't really like the idea that employers having this power either.

This could distort the market and suppress what I think is a very healthy trend toward bootstrapping in high tech. Not that bootstrapping is necessarily better than funding - in many cases, I'm sure it isn't. But the decision to accept funding (and the terms of that funding) should be based on what's good for the business, not whether the founders need a VCs permission to live in the US.

Obviously VCs are very relevant in software, but with the drop in cost of starting a business, software entrepreneurs may need them less and less... unless, of course, they need a visa. This will put VCs right back in the driver's seat, and let's not pretend this has anything to do with the market - it has to do with VCs gaining control over a government function (immigration) and potentially using it as leverage over entrepreneurs.

The CoC's thing is helping its members make gobs of cash, and that's often a very bad thing because it comes at the expense of everyone and everything else. Tech is one of those weird cases where public and private interests frequently align naturally.

The US Chamber of Commerce is pretty much in bed with the oil/gas/"old energy" producers, which has caused a variety of tech companies to leave it because of it's environmental policies which were often in the global warming skeptic/denier camp - Apple left in 2009, for example:

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2009/10/19/091019ta_...

It's just a press release. It means that the person or institution that endorsed it can say they endorsed it.

The Startup Visa basically got as far as John Kerry trying to put it on a bill and eventually after it stalled it was revealed that Obama doesn't support it which makes it DOA. http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/30/startup-visa-d-o-a-and-star...

Comprehensive immigration reform is something that we can hope for in Obama's second term. Hope & Change 2012!

The President doesn't oppose it, just doesn't support it as a stand-alone. He's included it as part of Comprehensive Immigration Reform.

All the same, we've picked up two more Senators and another House member since that piece came out. Stalled? Not so much.

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