New York I Love You, But US Immigration Policy Is Bringing Me Down | Hacker News Reader

New York I Love You, But US Immigration Policy Is Bringing Me Down

blog.untogether.co.uk

33 pointsuntog19 comments

As someone currently going through my second H1B transfer in three years, I hope it works out quickly for you.

I'm in the process of drafting a letter to the Rep from my district about the nightmare that this process has been. I know its not going to change any overarching policy, but I'd at least like for the USCIS to keep the documentation I've already provided for my current visa on file so that I don't need to send them paperwork they've already seen for my first three applications.

Unfortunately, I suspect that somewhere at the heart of the USCIS system an entity relationship is enforced such that there is a one to one relationship between candidates and cases/visas and, thus, no interchange of information between one case/visa and the next. One advantage of this is that there is not likely to be much carryover of any errors between cases. This is purely speculation though.

A better model might result in a one to many relationship between candidates and cases/visas, where only one can be active at a time. This might result in an easier way for the immigration service to query each visa and tell me exactly what documentation is necessary for a transfer. However, this would also involve me trusting USCIS to actually manage and keep my data safe and secure. It would also involve me trusting them not to make any errors when inputting data to their system and for there to be an easy way to correct their data when they do make a mistake.

The one unfortunate thing that I'm sure about regarding immigration issues is that things are not going to change anytime soon. The lawyers who assemble and file visa applications at a very high cost for companies are not going to be happy if the system is made accessible for people to do by themselves. They, unfortunately, have a vested interest in keeping things as complicated as possible.

As for me, I'm going to do the same thing I've done with all my visa applications, I'm going to assemble everything associated with the application into one place (all paperwork, forms, emails, communications etc) and make a digital copy which will be encrypted and stored on a backup drive as well as a physical copy which will sit in my personal safe. Then, I'm going to start my new job and forget everything about the process and hope that I don't have to go through it again for a long time.

Good luck with everything!

'Guilty until proven innocent' is the method applied by US immigration.

I remember applying for a visa for my wife and it said so in plain words.

The government is basically saying to you: 'prove that you are not a terrorist/spy/fraud'

I am a Canadian permanent resident. I am also an open source developer. Somewhat high in our (non)organization ladder. So I travel quite some to this and that conference, meet, code sprint, whatever. My chances of getting Canadian citizenship with a lifestyle like that? Naught :/

Welcome to Bureaucracy.

Come back to your own country where every one else paid for your education, your healthcare, your safety and your opportunities.

Start business. Employ people.

Pay it forward.

Problem solved.

As a Canadian in the US I've had to accept that this most of this country just doesn't want me to be here - every dealing I've had with DHS and the State Department has reinforced this point.

Your suggestion doesn't really work though - for me, the Canadian software industry is woefully lacking compared to what's out here in the Bay Area (or really, the rest of the USA). The talent pool is dramatically smaller (lower wages means a lot of the good hackers are in the US), investors more risk averse, and the startup ecosystem/community extremely limited.

Living in SF now, I cannot imagine doing a startup anywhere else. Can I try anyways? Sure, but why would I sabotage myself trying to force a business down the gullet of a city/country that doesn't support it?

Go and try to start a company in the UK, and then see if you're quite as enthusiastic about repatriating smart people.

Nothing about British society and culture is receptive to startups and entrepreneurs - it's an uphill struggle (both ways! in the snow!) to even get something simple started, let alone fully explore new ways of doing business.

The net result is that the entrepreneur has produced less value for the world than if they'd been able to build their idea in America, where there's far less friction in getting new ideas off the ground.

The US is (still) a unique and wonderful place for smart people to try to realize their potential. As a country in a global competition for talent, we should be doing everything in our power to attract and retain the smartest people in the world.

(UK emigrant)

Do you mean start a company, or build a product? As another UK expat in America, starting my first company here (and having run a company back home), the process for starting a company in the UK is slightly more efficient than in the US.

If you're talking about finding investment, that's a different matter. But finding investment is only "easy" in a few places in America. It's certainly no easier to find investment in the city in which I am based than it is in London.

Edit: (and I'm not so sure we should all be building companies that need hundreds of thousands of dollars to get off the ground. That places exist where we can do that in the world is great, but bootstrapping creates different types of worthwhile businesses.)

Finding investment, talent, or even just being able to tell people you're starting your own business without getting a look like you've just told them you've got a second head... the US (even the remoter parts) has a far better support network for entrepreneurs than even large UK cities.

Agreed about bootstrapping, but even that is easier in the US where people are more conditioned to pay for services, consultants, etc.

I can't say I've experienced anything like what you've talked about. What places in the UK and the US are you talking about/comparing ? My experiences have been in London, Bournemouth and Phoenix.

My original comment was tongue in cheek, but if you seriously believe this than you are cuckoo.

I know people who have started a video company, another who's started a money saving card, another who's selling phone apps, another who's started a social musician site, another who's doing a website monitoring service. All living within 1/2 hour of me.

I also know people who have started more traditional businesses, trying to disrupt mortgage brokers and the like.

No-one's ever said 'oh noes, woe is me, the government is out to get me'. They're all 'dammit find customers, find customers, find customers'. Which is normal.

And on. And on. There's even some bio startup centre near me which I only heard about last week, http://www.biocity.co.uk/.

Yesterday I was sitting round a table with 5 others for a 'launch it' club.

As another commentor has said, perhaps funding's what you're talking about, I wouldn't know as I've not tried, but for actually creating and running a business? What are you on about? In the end the new paradigm is low cost startup using incubators and surprise, they're in the UK too.

I don't even live in London/Cambridge/Bristol which are the known cities for startups in the UK.

You can find people anywhere who have started businesses to test their ideas, the issue is scaling those businesses past a certain point.

There are many brilliant people in the UK, yet the UK has no equivalent to Google, Facebook, Oracle, Apple, etc - why? Why does the BusinessWeek Top 100 (http://www.businessweek.com/it100) have 1 UK company and 40+ US companies, if there are not intrinsic differences between US and UK attitudes towards building and growing businesses?

I am not trying to make a qualitative assessment of the two countries, or predict what will happen in the future - but the statistics bear out that if you want to build something on a world-class scale, the US still provides far greater opportunities to do so (it'll also crush you if you aren't lucky and end up on the bottom of the pile, but that's a whole other discussion).

You've gone from saying it's impossible to start a business in the UK to talking about some totally random list of 'top' IT companies that seems to have plucked out of the author's ass.

BT has a bigger operating income than most of the 'top' companies but somehow it doesn't count. But Verizon and China Mobile do?

What about ARM? You know, that Cambridge, UK company? We're talking about the hottest company in processors right now. That 'equivalent' that doesn't exist?

Oh yeah, not on the list.

Netflix is there, but Lovefilm isn't. Because....

Last.fm? Spotify? And they're just the ones I know about personally.

And, um, exactly where on that list is Microsoft?

Maybe it's a little US centric because maybe, and I'm guessing here, it's written by an American. Just a hunch.

Heh, so the list by BusinessWeek isn't very quantitative then, is it?

Didn't say it was impossible, just harder. ARM is a good example, so let's use that.

ARM is tiny compared to, say, Intel (1,700 employees vs 82k, GBP406m revenue vs GBP27 billion), despite having great technology for many decades and being, as you say, the hottest thing in processors right now.

It should be much larger, but it is not because the UK as a culture does not value or nurture entrepreneurial talent to the anywhere near the extent that the US does. If it did, then shouldn't ARM be much closer in size to Intel, Texas Instruments (GBP8bn rev), AMD (GBP4bn rev) or nVidia (GBP2.1bn rev)?

Again, I am not saying that there are no entrepreneurs, startups or successful companies in the UK, but that the odds are significantly better for US companies.

Ach, believe what you want. If you want to actually get a proper idea of why the UK's not leading the world in processors watch 'Micro Men' for a précis. They shot themselves in the foot, nothing to do with people not valuing or nurturing them. That's where the ARM comes from and it's taken this long to recover from their personal rivalry.

Or you can keep claiming that only in the US do you have people who want to be entrepreneurs. But you sound like a prat as the UK is known for it's innovation fostering.

You seem to be totally missing my point; the UK has plenty of people who want to be entrepreneurs and plenty of innovation - it just fails to capitalize on it and our greatest products languish in obscurity, while they should be leading the world.

I totally agree with you that the UK has incredible innovators. UK companies build products that are light years ahead of the rest of the world, but that are unknown outside of the UK (Spectrum, BBC Micro, Amstrad, Acorn, Psion, Teletext?).

This is a good place to wrap up, as we clearly have a very different picture of our mutual homeland - which is why you're happy there and why I am happy not being there.

Best of luck to you, and I really mean that (even though you called me a prat :) ).

US immigration is just like a Monty Python sketch and contains some Yes/No questions, such as;

Have you ever committed Genocide?

Are you coming to the United States to practice Polygamy?

Are you coming to the United States to use or deal in illegal Drugs?

Have you ever been a part of a Terrorist organization?

Are you planning to overthrow the US government?

US immigration policy brings everyone down except maybe those from the Ministry of Silly Walks.

I found those questions fairly amusing when filling out forms. In retrospect, though, I'm guessing that they expect people who meet those criteria to lie. They're there to give them a legally simple way to throw undesirable people out of the country (you perjured on your entry application), should it come up in retrospect.

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