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Comment by thegypsyking | Hacker News Reader

What type of visa does a 20 year old get to start a hedge fund on wall street? I’m really curios, because working on this is my dream but I’m stuck as an L1 engineer at faang instead :(. I worked really hard to get here but I really wish I could do something like this (legitimately) instead.

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EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program - all it takes is 1mil usd and you are in.

Back then it was 500k. And also it's not that you loose the money, you actually do invest it but it has to be on businesses that the government green lights as "job creators". When I looked into it, those were mostly agriculture or real estate.

Gotta wonder how "real estate" qualifies as a job creating field. Sounds like BS to me

In an ideal completely honest and devoid of mischief world, immigration policy would be everyone lives and works wherever they want. So yeah, the argument that immigration policy is bullshit stands on its own weight.

The investor visa is basically the ruling class telling you they will let you work in their companies if you also invest in the place where they park their generational wealth.

I think the investment is supposed to support 10 US jobs. Mostly in construction I imagine. There is a certain amount of BS.

Last I checked, my mortgage does in fact have interest on it, and the company that services that loan does have employees.

Yeah I mean it's not zero, but there's a lot of capital going into a thing that's not employing _that many people_, even beyond the value judgements around that.

Granted, maybe "real estate" here also means construction (which has its issues but I mean, people are building stuff). But I'm imagining more the "let me invest in buildings and make money off of it"-style industries.

Sure, a call center. Same as any business that sells a service to the public.

It’s still 500k to invest in poor locations. Unless I’m out of date and that has changed as well

You need to invest the money too. From my understanding most people pool the money into a ready-to-go Real Estate Development company which then makes real estate loans. Hence it's an equity investment, meeting the EB5 requirement, but in practice its basically a bond. Real estate money gets refinanced as long as the deal is not terrible.

If I remember correctly, some fancy places in New York are eligible for the 500k exemption. Might check that!

I think they used a gerrymandering type argument that the fancy place was part of an area including a bunch of poor folk. The drawing of the area was kind of creative. It was taking the piss slightly but they got away with it.

If you've got the chops to run a hedge fund, an O-1 parlayed into an EB1A green card.

Or, if you're from a listed country, an E-2 treaty investor visa.

> If you've got the chops to run a hedge fund

Apparently not.

Is there anything more? Just make a 1M investment and you get a greencard?

Actually many countries have similar systems in place. For instance Spain's costs around 500,000 EUR (and then you must live in Spain for the next 10 years)

Reactions to discovering this kind of thing exist tend to vary. https://www.goldenvisas.com/country

The temptation to buy a passport for an island somewhere for a 'donation' is strong, however, its not as obvious as a shiny car in your driveway.

I'm confused by this comment,

(1) because you're hoping to know how a 20-something year-old led millions of dollars' worth of scams, to... emulate it?

(2) because you feel stuck as somebody working at a FAANG (I know it might just be another wednesday for some HN users but I'll remind them that faang work still remains the 1% for the plebs not graced by "that" touch)

There are ways to find inspiring leaders that don't involve them spending nearly a decade in prison. For one, thorough discussion with interesting people (people you deem interesting probably are, you made it to a faang) of all ages (success in youth is lovely but unless you bet on chance being on your side you might want to broaden your horizons), and accepting that leadership takes many shapes - not just the ones that make the bad kinds of headlines.

I'm not your target audience though, and probably just ruminating helplessly as an answer to your message fishing for future investors - apologies.

What's confusing? They clearly said they wanted to "start a hedge fund on wall street ... legitimately" which is entirely valid and something others have found success in.

Why did you still assume their intention was to scam? And what does any of this have to do with finding leaders?

Because of the subject they're responding to, perhaps. They're a top-level visible reply to an article about a hedge fund 20-something getting sent to prison for years, so perhaps I'm dim but I'd say there are troves of better articles about hedge funds to be asking for guidance on how to get there, unless the "there" is prison of course.

Although I might just be dim, and you and I simply don't have the same understanding of context then.

They're asking about how the scammer obtained a seemingly undeserved visa, not about how to scam people.

Then I apologize for misunderstanding the point of the post, and it's probably better for me to leave the whole chain without edit after this realization.

No worries! I was feeling a bit stick yesterday so apologize if the original doesn’t make much sense. Above is right, I was wondering how I could do something similar but legitimately, since last I checked biggest issue for me would be the immigration.

I know I’m in a super good situation, especially compared to others in the rest of the world, but there’s still that feeling when you know you’re ready for a new stage in your life yet some invisible hand is holding you back.

I'm not from the US but I have heard of a sometimes tough road to take no matter how anchored and "productive" you are. In case the road is blocked in the US I'll offer the insight that Canada is a very welcoming country too :) (it has taken this European in, for one).

I wish you the best of luck with that immigration process.

He is from Australia, so they have access to the E-3 visa [0], which is a lot easier to get than most of the others. That is not to say that it is the visa he is on, I just wanted to highlight the possibility.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-3_visa

Yes, I figured that’s most likely it as well.

email me

Will do!

found your company, hire yourself on h1/o1.

Not really possible when you’re already inside US with a visa tied to your company. Plus not sure how investors would see a foreigner setting up a us company he can’t run without their investment (risk coming from gov ineptitude is not something anyone likes)

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