The second biggest is the iPhone app store approval process. And the two have a lot in common: absolute judgements made by people who don't really understand what they're judging, and who are not subject to any kind of external forces themselves.
I'm a writer and I see a lot of similarities in myself to start-up's and the general population here on HN. Our essential constraint for developing is access to a computer, and you can do that anywhere, but as immigrants we move for quality of life. I'm going to write wherever I am, it's a simple fact and I'm sure everyone on her will develop wherever they are, which is the same for any immigrant.
I'm lucky that I benefited from my move. Any sale I make to Europe (I'm from the UK) now cover the loss for selling to a foreign market (roughly 1/3 loss due to paying translators and a foreign editor) by the exchange rate potentially doubling my income, so I still make 32% more per sale for cost of living than I would in the UK for equivalent sale without being punished for sales to the US (essentially a 1/3 cut and then a 1/2 cut on top of that for the exchange rate, meaning having to sell 5 copies in the US for 1 in the UK).
Again I'm lucky that my cost of living decreased while my quality of life increased, and this isn't the case for immigrants from poorer countries. Immigrant developers are moving to the US for an increased quality of life for a decreased cost of living when compared to their job. They'll spend much more money in the US than they would in India or wherever they come from, so the whole reason they want to move is assimilation, which the xenophobes are incapable of grasping due to either wilful or unwilful ignorance.
So I think Maciej's point stands: if you were funding companies that weren't in the US, you would be less likely to think immigration issues seemed to be the single biggest external source of pain for startups right now.
I'm having a hard time figuring out how you could have interpreted Maciej's comment so as to think that your response might make sense. Can you elucidate?
Also, why can you not employ these people remotely?
But I think PG was mainly referring to non-US YC applicants that want to continue staying in the valley after the 3 months. In general a YC round is about 10-20% foreign
A coalition of influential and prominent Silicon Valley companies could really have an effect on things (hopefully).
Edit: Seems like some of this is already happening, nevermind.