The $100k green card
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
While some of you may not view New Zealand with the admiration that you view the US, as its tech-scene isn't quite as developed. It is a beautiful country nonetheless, free healthcare is available for all residents and citizens, not to mention the all around natural beauty of it.
Don't get the wrong impression, there is no doubt that the US is a great place, but it isn't without its problems. I'm not trying to sell you on NZ, the point I'm trying to make is why should I have to bust my balls and save up $100k for a green card when I can have more lenient and reasonable terms in another country with an emerging tech scene?
Note: it is probably easier for entrepreneurs to supply $100K for a green card, however, I intentionally ignored that circumstance as they're a minority amongst immigrants and chose to discuss immigration to the US in general.
Bottomline: America unknowingly abuses and doesn't treat immigrants with the respect that they deserve, they contribute equally to the economy as any other demographic (if not more), and are a major part of high tech industries, and therefore, of the US economy.
As an extra bonus... With a NZ permanent residency, I believe, one is also permitted to work and reside in Australia; easily the outstanding economy and often top placed in most living standards, job opportunity and economic and political stability surveys. By way of example, Australia's current head of state and head of government are women.
If the USA continues to put up unnecessary barriers for up-and-coming entrepreneurs to stay in and benefit the US, why not take your business ideas elsewhere?
Frankly there are many more places in the world to live and prosper financially. We live in a global economy, so location should not be always of prime importance for a web-based startup, or...?
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/kiw...
http://www.indymedia.org.au/2011/04/21/help-appeal-for-a-fai...
Unfortunately, this is the system US citizens have right now and, for my compatriots who agree with me and would like to see you on a plane tomorrow, ready to study here, graduate, be inspired by, and enrich our society, I am truly sorry we couldn't get the change done in time for you. We're working on it.
/buys another ream of paper for more letters to various representatives
With regard to FUD on the part of the masses driving legislation, I suppose it's an intrinsic part of democracy. Which implies the following:
The vast majority of those satisfied by the status quo are the uninformed members of the public. On the other hand, the highly educated and those driving the economy are strong proponents of leniency in immigration, as evident by the frequent discussions on popular forums such as leading publications and HN.
The average American believes that more opportunities are made available to them, regardless of whether they're qualified, if they stop immigrants from coming and stealing their jobs. Which I suppose is a reasonable conclusion for an uninformed person to reach.
The solution? Inform the public, for after all, the US is a democracy, and it's in their hands to change the system. Explain how immigration is essential to the development and progress of economies, educate people on the implications of immigration.
PS: I would be interested to learn if there are any non-profits that run campaigns that aim to educate and inform the public.
There are thousands of such organizations.
During the up-coming campaign, you'll hear lots of screaming that they're "unregulated campaigning" and the like.
> if they stop immigrants from coming and stealing their jobs. Which I suppose is a reasonable conclusion for an uninformed person to reach.
Unions and all professionals organizations believe that decreasing competition for jobs results increased salaries. We also believe that decreased competition in other products results in higher prices. Are they wrong or is immigrant job competition different?
Yes, some immigrants bring skills etc, but not all, and you didn't make that distinction.
I'd say that if you want to fix high-skilled immigration, that's exactly the argument you should not make.
What you should do is make an argument that appeals to American culture and sensibilities. Most Americans have ancestors who suffered--some a little, some a great deal--to come to America This is such a strong part of American culture that one of our major holidays, Thanksgiving, basically got it start from the spirit of gratitude that comes from surviving the horrors of trying to immigrate to the New World.
So an argument that boils down to "we're so awesome, how dare you make us bust our balls to become Americans" is going to rub a lot of voting Americans the wrong way. Especially when coupled with a condescending Vivek-Wadhwa-style "you Americans couldn't possible grow your economy on your own, so you should be grateful we immigrants want to come at all." Most Americans expect immigrants to be grateful for the opportunity to come to America, not the other way around.
So, as I said, make an argument that appeals to American culture and sensibilities. In my opinion, the biggest problem with skilled immigration is that 1) H-1B is tied to employment, and 2) so many H-1B visas are consumed fradulantly. So fight against H-1B fraud by insisting on strong enforcement of immigration law. Very few Americans will argue with that, and it will help open up H-1B slots.
And push for H-1B to be decoupled from employment, using the (accurate) argument that the current scheme is basically indentured servitude, a concept that most Americans (as part of our founding mythology) know is a Bad Thing. If H-1B wasn't tied to employment, you wouldn't need a Startup Visa. You wouldn't need the permission of an employer to move to the U.S. And it wouldn't matter (as much) if your green card application took years.
It's always convenient to blame things on your political opponents, but lets be realistic here. Bush's amnesty bill was shot down by a bipartisan group.
Some of them did actually oppose amnesty. But quite a few of them on the opposite side of the aisle had strong opposition to replacing family based immigration with skill based immigration.
In reality, the fight about immigration is about importing people to vote for their political party. The politicians don't care about much else.
Not true. The "smart immigration" proposals keep getting tied to the amnesty proposals by an alliance of the open borders folk and the "smart immigration" folk.
And the reason why amnesty is such a tar pit is that we've had it before, with a promise of enforcement after that never happened (hence the current amnesty push).
The opponents to amnesty are willing to have smart immigration, but not with amnesy.
Are you willing to have smart immigration without amnesty?
I'm afraid the price tag will mostly put it out of reach of most but drug dealers and similar undesirable people.
US has almost the same case, as far as STEM students go. You can get a F-1 visa for 5 years, which includes permission to work 20 Hours on campus, or 40 hours off-campus for work related to your education (like a internship or something). Once you are done with 5-6 years of your PhD, you get Optional practical training time(12 months), during which you can take a job, etc. If you are in STEM category,you get another 17 month extension. So in all you have about 2.5 years after your studies (assuming you join a PhD in CS).
As far as students are concerned, US has a very good visa program, but getting a visa to stay after 2.5 years of work seem to be the tricky part. They are not very enthusiastic about keeping students in which they invest a lot of money and time.
- $100,000 in cash money paid to the US Treasury earns an instant I-551 visa along with visas for a spouse and any immediate minor children.
- $50,000 buys you a temporary worker visa (2 years?) that isn't tied to an employer. The temporary visa residency time doesn't apply for the time period needed to gain citizenship. At the end of two years you either pay the same $100,000, apply through other means, or depart. On this visa, if you raise at least $200,000 worth of investment or have created $200,000 worth of jobs in your temporary residency period (e.g. 4 FTE @ $50k annual salary) the $100k fee is waived.
Each dollar amount is indexed to inflation and adjusted annually for new applicants.
Yes, it puts a price tag on residency which some might find unseemly but I think it quantifies a contribution to society and prevents political gamesmanship.
I agree we need to keep more talented foreigners in the country, but a $100k price tag isn't the right solution. How would an immigrant save up that money while studying in the US (or while in their former country)? If he/she drops out of college they wouldn't be able to stay on their student visa...
In fact, this author's suggesting we blindly accept anyone that can pay $100k. It seems to me this approach would attract more terrorists and/or criminals with those types of resources abroad than freelancing entrepreneurs.
Nevermind that this wouldn't solve the current illegal immigration problem either.
For example, I wouldn't be surprised if an enterprising banker started a program to lend you $100K on condition that you pay them x% of your salary for y years. Companies like Microsoft might find that an attractive alternative to the current H1B circus.
For a large segment of foreign enterprising individuals this is not a good enough deal though. Looking at myself: When I finished school in the US a decade ago I just spent $100K buying education and I didn't have another $100K available. Now, living in the EU, I have a successful startup and could afford it but I also have a wife and kids and I am no longer able nor willing to move.
First, $100k is a big but not absurd amount of money for an American or European (it's roughly 1 year salary of a good engineer), but everywhere else in the world it's much harder to save that kind of money - it's closer, say, to the price of a decent house for a middle-class family.
The efffort to save that money will be very different per country of origin, which is very unfair. A Brazilian engineer has 3X better wages than an equivalent Chinese engineer, due to different currency valuation and salary standards.
People will start paying for this not with cash but with bank loans. These will be relatively high-risk loans so in practice, people will pay $100k to the US treasury, and maybe another $50-100k in interest to some private bank. And even if the loan is from an US bank, this doesn't necessarily mean "even more money injected in the American economy" - these days, money that goes to banks rarely benefits society in any significant way.
Having $100k in cash doesn't necessarily prove that you have the kind of skills that would ensure a well-paid job, and benefit the US economy. Maybe you are a mediocre professional, but you just inherited this money. Or your family helped realize their loved son's immigration dream, so you can only pay for the green card because dad sold his house. Or you just worked your ass off for 20 years in low-pay jobs, having a lot of discipline to save money. Or you made a loan (item above), maybe using family's property as collateral so you don't even have the merit for that loan. End result, a low-skilled worker being granted a green card and maybe becoming a liability to Social Security after failing to get an US job.
There's nothing stopping the creation of other paths to residency/citizenship. Everything suggested can be implemented without worsening anyone's situation.
I definitely wouldn't call it asinine because it doesn't help everyone equally.
Ok, so now for some people, its gonna cost $100K, to make it evident.
I think my irony meter just broke!
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edit: I'm also guilty of not paying proper attention to the title: "A Modest Proposal..." [1]. Sorry.
Having said that, simply "selling entry" would lead to a lot of rich people moving here and buying up property, driving prices sky-high(er) in coastal cities.
This is the issue right now in London where lots of Arab and Russian oligarch-types taking advantage of non-domicile tax laws drive up the cost of living but don't contribute to the economy in a meaningful way. Before you say "trickle down", sure they spend money on nannies and posh food, but that's trivial compared to the vast fortunes they store and control outside the UK.
Something like an investment or startup visa would help to ensure that people are coming here to be productive members of society. There's the EB-5 ($1m+ and ridiculous amounts of red tape) and the E-2 (Arbitrary amount around $100k, but no route to permanent residence), but both are broken programs.
The US tax law is not like that. If you're a legal permanent resident (i.e. a green card holder), you pay taxes for everything you own and make everywhere in the world. So that's not actually a problem.
It is also the reason why those Arab and Russian oligarch types won't be moving to the US any time soon. (It's already cheap enough for them at $1M -- going down to $100k won't make a difference. The British requirement, BTW, is 500K pound, which is ~$750K)
As someone who recently got one through employment, I'd say $100k is a hefty price tag: legal expenses on a fully completed GC process is around $10k. During the time you're spending $10k, you are employed and are getting paid prevailing wage for the area of employment (more, if you are good at what you do - employer doesn't want to lose you).
Granted, things won't be so rosy for people from India or China due to time constraints, but $100k cash for these folks won't really be that easy either, I guess.
But yeah, $100k does seem a bit steep. That's almost the price of a college education, and a substantial fraction of the price of a good house. And in this economy, a lot of people are already having trouble paying both of those off; adding $100k on top of that for immigration would put this out of the reach of many people that I think that we do want to encourage to move here.
As a natural born citizen of the US who has many foreign friends, I am appalled at what they have to go through to get citizenship here. Some of them have managed to pull it off; some have given up and moved back home, or to other countries in which it's easier to get a work visa. And these are Ivy-league educated folks with masters degrees and PhDs in business and technical fields. I cannot believe that we are making it so difficult for such people to come to the US.
$100k's pretty cheap for a professional - there's enough of a salary differential between the US and most other places in the world (especially once factoring taxes in - eg. pay is high in Switzerland but so are taxes) that it would not take more than a few years to make back the $100k.
Agree that it's shocking how difficult it is for smart, educated individuals to immigrate at a time when the country needs to be attracting global talent to maintain it's lead.
I'd love to see the terms on this kind of loan: people coming to US from the abroad do not have any credit history whatsoever. Now, if this will be some government-sponsored loan, I could only imagine the amount of bureaucracy involved and timelines for that.
If one were to look for better way for immigration problem resolution - Canada and Australia have decent processes of getting people they need in.
It takes time, a lot of it, money and lawyers. Oh, and a complete family medical history, blood draws, and pictures and prints.
As a green card holder I have the same rights as any American (while on American soil, the marines won't come rescue me for example as I am still a Dutch citizen), the only right green card holders do not get is the right to vote. Which I find semi ironic considering that we are still taxed the same, but we don't get to choose our representation... something the United States was founded on.
This is not true at all. How long it takes to get a green card depends on the category of green card you can apply for (there are at least 4 types of employment based green cards) AND on the country in which you were born.
For most people born in India and China, the process takes significantly longer than 1 year. I personally know multiple senior software engineers working for top software companies who have been waiting for over 7 years.
A CTO of the company I'm working at is waiting for his green card for almost TEN years! The guy is a key person for the company, has two kids and bought a house, but is still on H1. :(
Even so, The idea is not bad, since it is talking about skilled workers and EB5 is for investors
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
Anyone up for building a new country?
For one, America was not actually founded solely on "tired and poor masses yearning to breathe free", but on a huge takeover and displacement plan for the native americans.
Then, "tired and poor" masses of african americans were used as slaves, and tons of "tired and poor" masses of white people were also used quite like slaves (sharecroppers and the like).
And even after that stopped, there was tons of racial tension (do you think Italians, Irish and Jews were welcomed to New York initially?).
Another consideration, if tens of millions of muslims, for example, come to the US and change it vote by vote, to follow islamic law, would you like it? Or does you "bring me your..." proposition presupposes that mass immigration will not happen if all is left open?
America wasn't founded in order to take anything from Natives; this was a very unfortunate side affect. Your right, slavery was a stain on America for nearly a century. And there was racial tension against Irish, Jews, Italians ect, just like it is for Muslims in some sectors of society right now.
But these people were still given an opportunity to flourish through their own doing, and many of them have. The Kennedy's are the most obvious example of an Irish American family doing supremely well despite lingering prejudice towards Irish immigrants. Obviously other examples exist.
The Muslim question you bring up at the end is different. The reason people are so scared is that Islamic Law contradicts the notion of freedom. We can and should allow freedom of religion, but not before we ensure that all people are free. And Islamic Law flies in the face of a lot that is presented in our Constitution.
I'm not sure. The whole point of the conquest of the Americas was pillaging and exploiting the new continent by and for the European nations. Even the words "conquest, conquistador" etc speak volumes.
America (as in "the US") itself, was just some of those people descendants that declared themselves a new sovereign nation. But they too had to take the land from its previous inhabitants, an operation that started before the US established and declared independence, and continued even after that.
Yeah, especially as for the English it meant "taking your land for peanuts".
I think we can all agree the current system is broken. I don't know what a better one is, but whatever it is needs to make room for people who can't afford a $100k entry fee, but would contribute to American society in other ways.
1. They pay taxes.
2. They spend their money on goods and services supplied by American businesses.
That constitutes contribution to American society. If anything, immigrants should be actively sought.
1. They pay taxes. 2. They work.
Their spending of money on goods and services is what they take out of the system.
For instance, they could send it abroad.
If they spend it on goods and services in the same economy that they earned it in then they are contributing again.
The only exception is where the number of immigrants present creates beneficial economies of scale. For example, without the many Indian immigrants in Jersey City, Sri Ganesh's Dosa House probably would not have sufficient business to continue operating.
Nonsense.
If I, as a red blooded "non immigrant" (what the fuck does immigrant really mean? who cares where I was born?) sell widgets, and "immigrants" love to buy lots of widgets, it is trivial to see how this is good for me.
The one thing we do not have though is a way to influence the political landscape of the country as we are not allowed to vote. So ultimately with a green-card there is taxation without representation, which I myself find quite ironic as the United States was founded on the principle that it was wrong to pay taxes and not be represented...
As for remittance, I believe that people are free to spend their disposable income however they wish.
It would be nicer to supplement something like this with a system that allowed people who paid $X or employed Y people to get a green card faster.
Wouldn't this invite loan sharks lending money to relatively poor unemployed people in other countries, selling them the American dream and make them work on slavery-like terms for decades until they pay of their debt?
I do expect that most people coming in would require loans, but that most of them would still be better off with this program.
As an alternative they could also just do what australia does which is a skilled immigrant system where you score points for your background.
The US now has a tax regime that is possibly the worst in the world for people who are somewhat rich, but not superfilthy rich (a category that I guess includes > $1M and < $50M in liquid assets).
If you live in the US with a green card (which can expire or be canceled at the governments whim), you take on ALL the obligations of a citizen, including gift tax, estate tax, reporting of everything you ever own outside the US (with a 50% penalty if you knowingly fail to report something -- google FBAR). \
Furthermore, if you do that for a few years, and you move back (say, because your green card was cacneled), you have to pay the "exit tax", which is more or less the estate tax you would have paid had you died that day.
If you're making $300K a year, your tax rates are probably around 45% (35% federal, 5-13% state; although e.g. NH has no state tax). The state tax has no treaty cover, so if your income comes from another country, you're likely to be double taxed on that.
Also, if you're making under $500K a year, you likely fall under the AMT, which means those attorney fees, tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars of them, are not expensible (and neither is almost anything else).
I really don't see a reason why someone who already has wealth would pay $100K, let alone $1M, to gain US residency. It is pure lunacy.
Both these objections are dead wrong. The truth is that the US economy needs immigration to work. If you doubt it, just look at Japan.
In fact, immigration is the largest wealth transfer program from developing countries to the developed.
It is already bad enough that poor countries are paying for the upbringing, training and education of these skilled migrants for which they get no compensation. To compound this with this additional tax would be criminal.
Citation needed. Japan was flourishing in past decades, even without immigration. And the US is not that much better off, debt and economy wise now.
"""In fact, immigration is the largest wealth transfer program from developing countries to the developed. It is already bad enough that poor countries are paying for the upbringing, training and education of these skilled migrants for which they get no compensation."""
The majority of immigrants from development countries don't have that much training and education. "Skilled migrants" are the exception.
Not ever Indian immigrant, for example, is a programmer searching work in the Valley --actually, not even close to 1%.
Your standards for national success in fact drive (or at least indicate) this sort of trend: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Demographic_t...
How about this: which is preferable: incentives to counter the aging of the population OR embracing immigration?
There are of course efforts and policies in place to encourage people to have more kids, but focusing on those is ignoring the obvious and proven solution. Furthermore, they do not seem to work. At least not well enough.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Aging_of_Japa...
If, on the other hand, your priority is to preserve your way of live, your country's culture, etc, then encouraging immigration as thus, can lead to many problems, something a lot of countries can attest to.
Now, it's true that historically the US had been a "melting pot", which cultures joining and contributing, etc, but this is a notion of the past in an era with cheap travel, instant communications with the homeland etc. It's not 1890 anymore, when say immigrant workers had to more or less adapt to the "american way of life", separated as they were from their home culture. With a large enough immigrant population, as an immigrant you don't have to "melt" in the pot at all, you don't even have to try to learn english. Especially if the immigrant population, because it's unskilled, has no major aspirations besides some low end job.
This is all just xenophobic crap, and you should know that.
If all the people who don't want to work and don't want to fuck only want to speak English, but all the people who do want to work and fuck all speak Portuguese, then so be it. Life isn't a game and people who look the same and talk the same as you are not "your team". You don't "lose" if people dare have different ways of doing things on the same continent as you.
This talk of "the "american way of life"" makes me think of today's XKCD...
Regardless: You asked for a citation that strict immigration policies are hurting Japan, and I believe I have adequately provided them.
That's an idiotic oversimplification, and you should know that.
"""Life isn't a game and people who look the same and talk the same as you are not "your team"."""
Well, they are, and the team is called a "country" or a "nation". They don't have to look the same or talk the same, but they DO HAVE to share certain beliefs and agree on certain procedures.
"""You don't "lose" if people dare have different ways of doing things on the same continent as you."""
Actually, I do lose the ability to live in a country that operates the way I like.
With your reasoning, you can just as well move to Saudi Arabia, and you be fine with no free speech, women not voting/driving, religious hysteria etc.
I don't think that this is the case --you're just talking BS, secure in living in the specific environment that you like and are used to. For all your "diversity" talk, I don't think you could even make it for a week in rural Montana, much less with actual people --including people who could give a rat's arse about diversity.
It's really not... You are a xenophobe.
"team is called a "country" or a "nation"."
1) That is an absurd concept.
2) No part of "political entity" implies "ethnicity/language/tradition"
"Actually, I do lose the ability to live in a country that operates the way I like."
1) Xenophobia, again.
2) It's still allegedly a democracy isn't it? That has to be worth as much as it ever was.
"With your reasoning, you can just as well move to Saudi Arabia, and you be fine with no free speech, women not voting/driving, religious hysteria etc."
Strawman. How mature.
"all your "diversity" talk"
Where?
"I don't think you could even make it for a week in rural Montana"
You know precisely nothing about my personal life. Do not pretend that you do.
"Regardless: You asked for a citation that strict immigration policies are hurting Japan, and I believe I have adequately provided them."
This is still the case. Unless you wish to discuss that further, this conversation is complete.
Yes, thank you for your five-year-old "did too" reply.
"""1) That is an absurd concept. 2) No part of "political entity" implies "ethnicity/language/tradition""""
In your part of the world, maybe --it was after all a mish-mash of people that made it from scratch, and had to account for that.
In my part, it's even in the constitution. And if you ever read history, you would have found that the political entities called states were based on ethnicity/language/tradition. Maybe the fact that we call them "nation states" would have given you a clue.
"""1) Xenophobia, again."""
Knee jerk reaction, again.
"""It's still allegedly a democracy isn't it? That has to be worth as much as it ever was."""
Actually it's not worth that much. Do you voted for Patriot Act or DMCA?
I find it ironic that Americans, which from what I read on the intertubes can hardly tolerate the vast Bush-voting republican masses in between their two coasts, think that a mass injection of islamic or whatever else immigrants in a country will be even better. Because "there's always democracy".
""""With your reasoning, you can just as well move to Saudi Arabia, and you be fine with no free speech, women not voting/driving, religious hysteria etc."
Strawman. How mature."""
Strawman? Hardly. It's called a challenge. Can you walk the walk? Or do you think all "diversity" is like your friendly Starbucks diversity?
"""all your "diversity" talk" - Where?"""
Gee, I don't know, maybe in all those places where your knee-jerk reaction is to call out a "xenophobe".
"""I don't think you could even make it for a week in rural Montana" You know precisely nothing about my personal life. Do not pretend that you do."""
I don't have to "know" anything. I can see what your writing reveals.
""""Regardless: You asked for a citation that strict immigration policies are hurting Japan, and I believe I have adequately provided them." This is still the case. Unless you wish to discuss that further, this conversation is complete."""
Yes, let's backtrack when the conversation strays to somewhere we don't like. Actually, no, you haven't provided anything.
For one, I already made the distinction between aging and immigration.
Second, I'm in one part of the world with the most immigration influx in the last 10 years, and with the worst economic outcome for the same period. It's not like Japan's case proves anything in general.
Third, "hurting Japan" economically? How about benefiting them other ways? Or is all "economy"?
I have already addressed this, and you refuse to acknowledge that.
It is clear that you are beyond hope, you will continue to be a xenophobe even when your excuses for being so are addressed. Your comical attempts to profile me really just highlight the quality of your mental processes.
Here is my problem, though - I look around my floor in a NYC office (I'm a software engineer) and I see very few people who are American citizens.
To me, that is very discouraging. It shows that me that Americans who live in the US are becoming less competitive than people from other countries when it comes to technical careers.
Again, let me strongly state that I'm have no problem with people from other countries coming to work here - I'm just making an observation that it is somewhat sad that American companies simply cannot find enough Americans to do jobs in America.
So what happens if we make the immigration process far easier? I see a lot of complaints in this thread about how difficult/how long of a process it is. But what happens when people from other countries flood in? What happens to the fewer competitive Americans here? Suddenly, it's more expensive to hire them. More expensive to keep them on.
I think I have legitimate concerns. They make me less inclined to support making the process easier. Maybe I'm wrong about what I suspect will happen if we let people flood in - and if you think I'm wrong, I'm more than happy to examine any resources that you feel might help me change my mind. However, I don't think I'm wrong. I think it would be a disaster for American workers.
You're right that in the short-run, US workers will suffer but in the long run, everyone wins because it means that when setting policy, governments would have to consider the possibility that workers (as well as employers) might be able to find a better deal elsewhere. That's what I like about the US federal system. This would just be rolling it out across the whole world.
It's not just US workers that would suffer. Workers in other countries would suffer when US workers stop spending ask much money on more expensive things, like, say, imports from other countries.
Sure, wages will balance out. But if everyone gets screwed by that, do you really think you've given workers a fair deal?
Finally, you say: governments would have to consider the possibility that workers (as well as employers) might be able to find a better deal elsewhere.
Disregarding the fact that it is prohibitively expensive for most people to just pick up and move to another country, wouldn't governments just end up saying "well damn, our workers are getting screwed - let's erect some barriers to foreign workers to fix it", thus bringing everyone back to the same place eventually?
I just don't think it makes sense to open the floodgates to foreign workers. I think a better answer would be US foreign policy that encourages other countries to invest/nurture their high tech sectors.
I'm actually working in the US on a visa. I think my situation benefits everyone. It would have been easier for my employer to hire a US citizen, but they decided my skill set would be able to earn them enough extra money to make the effort worth it for them. So in theory the US economy as a whole should be better off.
I find the cash for citizenship proposal both amusing and arrogant. It implies that the US is so good that citizens of other countries should be willing to pay their life savings to live here.
Unfortunately it is today that we face a big handicap. We need a better immigration law now: seriously, now.
Without a long visa or green card we can't do long-term plans. It's harder to hire people, if we have to leave the day after tomorrow to our country to get/update/renew our visas. We can't take a long leasing for an office or an house. The real problem is that we can't live in a long-term mindset, and this makes an already difficult game (start a company, grow, hire people, create new jobs) harder to play.
We're are here, in a foreign country, hardly trying to make the difference, and start our businesses, realize our ideas, invest a part of our life here, in this country. And we need more help.
Under the EB-5 program for investors, by investing $500k in a targeted high unemployment area in a capital intensive project that creates jobs, an investor can get a green card.
I had no idea this program existed until this NYTimes program on ski resort Jay Peak, which raised $250m through the program. [http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/travel/with-renovations...]
Now if we'd only apply to entrepreneurs what we're already doing for investors...
Every policy must be driven by policy objectives.
For instance, if you want a risk-free way to create jobs in the short term for existing residents in US, a startup visa is a long bet. (There may be other policy objectives that could be achieved with startup visa, for instance acquisition of talent etc, but none of these do much for US's immediate needs)
Also, this is what it costs just to get an E2 visa right now.
Then I looked at the title of the post (it's been wrongly condensed here on HN).
Permanent residence in the USA is a valuable asset
It really depends on where you live. :)
It has to go both ways.
Startups do not produce jobs..especially web 2.0 statups
What produces jobs is middle-income Americans who have disposable income to buy products..ie product demand.
in fact we should reverse the 30 year trend of tax breaks for the 1% and transfer those tax breaks to middle-income Americans
This sort of thinking (money can buy everything), by the way, makes me sick. This is wrong on so many levels. What floors me even more is to see all HN comments pretending that this is a good idea. At least the techcrunch comments seem to get it.
Yes, it's expensive, and unfair, and even biased. It smacks of pay-to-play and partially dims the spotlight on the US' other immigration problems. Does this mean it shouldn't happen until we can get our politicos to get their heads on straight? No.
(My better half is a green card holder from a not-rate-limited country. We've had more than a few interactions with USCIS.)