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Comment by harrel | Hacker News Reader

I had to apply for an EB5 visa, and since I was opening an office in non-TEA city, Austin, I have to put over 1 million + expenses for it. I'm still in the process of making enough to enter here and open a company, but its hard for people from India. India is not a treaty nation so tech-founders from here have an extremely hard time entering here to start a business.

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It's not that hard actually, there are many hacks possible with the current immigration system. I am a tech founder from India, been in US 10 years and funded by a top tier valley VC. My green card application has been in progress forever...So I simply created a LLC and transferred my H1 visa to that. Super low-cost solution, better/cheaper than getting a green card or E2 or any of these funky visas. And this isn't just a fluke, a number of people in a similar situation have applied this hack successfully....

Good info!! Thanks

Do you have a blog / another way to reach you?

surferbayarea@gmail.com

For H1B there is a big waiting list in the first place. For h1b visa, there are legal complications if you try to hack the system in-terms of ownership of the company you created and so on, there gotto be a sponsor for you to get your h1b approved. In some cases penalty could be big enough to get you deported and ban you for X amount of years. I cannot afford that. There are some drawbacks on taxation side too.

I will not recommend to go that risky route if you're an entrepreneur.

I explored this option first and my lawyer told me to back off.

Yup bigger problem is getting the 100k investment in the first place. Most entrepreneur (even highly skilled ones) don't have that kind of luxury / investment to start-with (in developing countries).

Also on this list : http://travel.state.gov/visa/fees/fees_3726.html

Iran is repeated twice is think it's a typo. Iran in EB1 and India is EB5

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