With immigration reform off the agenda, some in tech turn to plan B
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I am by no means someone special in any way, compared to things that many other HNers have done. But I have now received an O1A visa successfully, twice.
I think the bigger problem with having that visa (or an H1B) is that it makes the prospect of quitting incredibly daunting. Each time you change your job, you have to leave the country, apply anew, risk being denied, and spend another 10k on legal & filing fees.
Unfortunately, that's a feature, not a bug. The anti-fraud people prefer it that way, and they have a lot of influence within DC to block these proposed changes.
Luckily, the O-1A, in contrast with the H-1B visa, is that it is an analog to a green card, the EB-1A, so if you are able to get an O-1A and wish to get the professional stability that a green card offers, you should be able to quickly progress from O-1A to EB-1A, which doesn't have the badly backlogged lines (especially for Indians or Chinese) of the EB-2 or EB-3 work-based, academic-qualifications green cards.
Link: http://shusterman.com/extraordinaryabilityimmigration.html
I was under the impression O1 visas didn't require employment?
More research is needed here.
The filing fees will run up about 2k including expedited processing (which is usually worth it). You're gonna have to go through a quite thorough process of building up a detailed dossier making your case for the government to review. This can easily cost 5-10k, depending on your attorney and the complexity of your case.
http://www.cjlore.com/blogs/charles-blog/o-1-visa-sponsor-ag...
The counter I'd offer is that you should look through the eight criteria as they currently stand: http://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-workers...
If you see obvious hacks for the Infosys types that we can close off, that'd be helpful to discuss here.
EDIT: And of course anything resembling a union is verboten among the powers that be in Silicon Valley.
I recently interviewed, and the guy was frightened when I told them I would probably not be at the same company in 5 years. Nope, I work night and day, but I'm burnt after 3 years on the same project, that's how it works. But in those 3 years, I bring the dev team from interns to a professional state, get a new UI out, and take some funding (well, at least I did it twice), and try to spread some values I deem good in the team.
I can't help but notice the inverse relationship between the number of H1-B's sponsored and the average salary by company.
http://www.myvisajobs.com/Reports/2014-H1B-Visa-Sponsor.aspx
There are many problems using the H-1B even at a policy level:
-Lottery/application in April, don't become active until October
-Doesn't work well for founders despite Aug 2011 change allowing founders to arrange their board to serve as "employer": http://www.uscis.gov/news/public-releases-topic/business-imm...
-Difficult and long timeline to green card meaning startup failure often leads to a fast mandatory exit from the US, even if investors continue to believe in the founder
-Neufeld memo means that startup sponsors are treated at a high level of suspicion by USCIS bureaucrats, which results in an even longer, more time/money/effort intensive process compared to bigtech: http://www.legalactioncenter.org/sites/default/files/docs/la...
Is the proposal really that YC acceptance becomes a singular criteria for getting the visa? So YC and their peers, in effect, would have full power to grant unlimited visas to people of their choice?
If that is what is being proposed, that sounds like a massive conflict of interest, with potential for serious abuse, even if the intent is positive.
Let's say for a moment, for the sake of argument, that YC decided to be unethical and accept payment in exchange for "accepting" people to the program to get them a visa.
1) Would it be so terrible to have people who have enough money to afford such a bribe be in the US contributing to the economy?
2) Do you really think YC would stake their reputation on such an abuse?
3) O1A visas are often given to artists, actors and athletes. Do you think that there isn't at least a few theater and movie production houses (usually underfunded and desperate for cash) that are accepting the payments to list a rich foreigner as an "actor" in their show?
In other words, I don't think this is actually a huge concern.
The problem is that it still allows private individuals to profit by being gatekeepers to the country. Extracting unfavorable financing deals that wouldn't be tenable if the investor didn't also hold the founders' residency permits, extracting corporate governance concessions for the same reasons. The list goes on.
We've seen widespread abuse of the H1B visa when it comes to turning labor into near-indentured servitude, particularly around the green card process. There's no reason to believe that YC, or any of the high-profile players in the Silicon Valley Funding Party are above it.
> "1) Would it be so terrible to have people who have enough money to afford such a bribe be in the US contributing to the economy?"
Yes. There is an investment track immigration option for people who simply want to buy their way into the country - this money goes to fund all manners of things, instead of into private pockets of a hypothetically corrupt YC.
http://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-through-job/green...
> "2) Do you really think YC would stake their reputation on such an abuse?"
Yes. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. If you give anyone the power to completely upend someone else's life at a whim, abuses will occur. Incentives are incredibly strong, and the slope is incredibly slippery. It will start with a gentle tilting of negotiations in favor of investors, and over years evolve into progressively more aggressive concessions.
At no point will anyone feel they are doing something overtly evil, just like how holding promotions back and lowering raises is just a matter of course when someone is in the midst of a green card application right now. It will all happen slowly enough that it won't feel like "abuse", it'll feel like "just the way things are".
> "3) O1A visas are often given to artists, actors and athletes. Do you think that there isn't at least a few theater and movie production houses (usually underfunded and desperate for cash) that are accepting the payments to list a rich foreigner as an "actor" in their show?""
Are we really making this argument? This boils down to "there is abuse happening elsewhere so we'll tolerate abuse here". Abuse of a system is abuse of a system - that it's happening elsewhere (possibly happening elsewhere I might add) doesn't justify it in our own back yard.
Letting private individuals gate-keep the country's citizenship/residency is a terrible, awful, stupid idea. It is a good idea only when predicated upon the assumption that the leaders of our industry are incorruptible.
Look at the Bay Area. Really look at the Bay Area. Is there any convincing evidence of the tech industry's incorruptibility?
Do you really think YC would stake their reputation
on such an abuse?
Or will the government get into ranking and evaluating incubators?
One thought was admissions rates, since folks seemed impressed by the soundbite that "YC had a lower admissions rate than Harvard," even leaving aside self-selection biases in the applicant pool.
Another is a startup community-run Self Regulatory Organization (SRO) that would get into the ranking and evaluating business a la Mattermark, with official certification/recognition by the government.
One thought was admissions rates
But these were all details to be worked out over the next few weeks iff the WH was willing to move forward with these discussions. It's unclear if that's the case, unfortunately. So we might be discussing details that were never on the table for a broad proposal that has already been rejected on the political merits.
Exactly. More importantly in the incentive structure I foresee, do you think YC's LPs would allow YC to stake their reputation on such an abuse?
No, actually, this is incorrect. Those are O-1B visas, for the arts, not O-1A, which is business and science.
And the change was basically, here are the criteria as they currently stand. If we squint at the language, startup founders can successfully apply for this visa. But it's a torturous process, very variable in length of time, plenty of people don't apply.
Goal: regularize the preparatory process for founders so that it is repeatable and predictable.
Process: look at the existing criteria language, which is defined by statute and cannot be changed without passing a law. Suggest reinterpretations of that criteria language such that within existing law, founders whose startups are demonstrating metrics of success understood within our community can use those metrics to also successfully apply for a visa.
Right now, there are eight criteria to qualify for the O-1A, of which, an applicant needs to establish three of those criteria qualifications. About half are clearly directly intended for academics, aka "where has your research been published?"
One change proposed is that high signal accelerators be seen as prestigious associations, traditionally including late-career honors, e.g. IEEE lifetime achievement. Yet YC has an acceptance rate lower than Harvard (a gameable metric to be sure). It's incredibly competitive. Yet completely unknown within DC as such an honor. Or TechStars; or 500Startups. But the predictable question from DC is where to draw that line? And our response should be to figure out how to generalize investor/accelerator signal strength such that DC can use it for establishing visa qualifications.
But hopefully to assuage your concerns, no YC acceptance doesn't become a singular criterion for getting the visa. Though if accepted, the changes would see YC/500/TS/similar acceptance as one of three criteria needed to qualify for the O-1A.
And over time, I would certainly expect AngelList, Mattermark, Disruption, &c... to be valuable for establishing investor signal metrics to complement the "accelerator as educational institute" model that the regulatory proposal alludes to.
Finally, keep in mind that the startup visa legislative proposal involved funding levels (lower than YC or most other seed-level funding rounds) and jobs created (usually directly proportional to funding). So investors would still see a conflicts of interest there. It has been something I've grappled with in years of pushing startup visa. Do you have any proposed solutions or improvements over either the legislative model or this proposed regulatory change?
I've considered a semi-independent Self Regulating Organization (SRO), like the financial sector has with FINRA. But that's so anti-lean, there has never seemed to be much support within the investor community, leaving aside the massive turnover of startups. But theoretically, it'd be a group that removes YC or similar from the direct equation by recognizing prestigious investors or accelerator programs. You'd ask for folks like Naval Ravikant (or Kevin Laws) to serve on the board and recuse themselves where they're LP'd or do (significant?) along-side investment (or maybe simply investment at a similar level of startup development, i.e. seed, A, B, &c...).
I also fear that a "win" here will allow legislators to push off further reform (e.g. "we just did something") instead of serve as a meaningful stepping stone.
As a community, we will still need immigration reform legislation should the White House agree to push this change through at the regulatory level. Legislation is the only way we get a viable, sustainable solution. And the proposal in the comprehensive immigration bill was the best policy proposal yet, with their non-immigrant X visa and immigrant (green card) EB-6.
But to get this small, incremental step done through executive action doesn't involve legislators (except in the negative, aka the effort saw YC going around the Hill asking folks to not link any hypothetical change in this space to the much more politically controversial changes coming about deportations).
So while there is a large change Congress continues to do nothing on startup visa or larger immigration reform for the next several years, it won't be because a potential win here will give legislators an out.
Finally, yes, the whole point of startup visa is to avoid the increasingly contentious debate over H-1Bs and foreign employees. Founders are small in number but very clearly hire Americans and directly drive economic growth. Politically, it's a no-lose proposition.
So it was a feature, not a bug, that this push focused on founders rather than employees, was small and incremental, and was executive focused rather than legislative.
Perhaps one appeal of this approach, though, is that this effort aligns better with legislator's "bottom line" - if you look at their bottom line as job creation.
I myself am an Indian citizen. I studied in Boston, moved to California with an upperclassman and started a company during my OPT. The company is fairly well-rooted while bootstrapped, but doesn't have massive funding in place yet. Towards the end of my OPT, I tried to apply for the H1B just because I wanted to continue working on the company I started, and because I'd come to call California home.
Are you suggesting my team find an American engineer of equal skill take my place in the tiny company I started for the no-salary I was earning, as cofounder? I'm confused.
As it stands I didn't get through the H1B lottery two years in a row, and am now pursuing this O1A visa, although this being my first startup (and job) out of college my track record is a bit sparse.
On to you: your situation is the exception to the common use of h1bs. You're probably a giant minority. The common use as far as I know of h1bs is to hold down wages of engineering. Microsoft and yahoo laying off engineers while simultaneously applying for h1b visas trivially demonstrates the lie in the "engineer shortage" nonsense.
Employee friendly changes to h1b visas could include many things: removing the tie between the sponsoring company and the employee (so if he or she is underpaid he or she can easily switch jobs); or aggressive investigation of prevailing wage requirements (oops there goes Infosys' business model); or 5+ year bans on h1b applications post layoffs. But bluntly, I think we have more than enough visas already. I'd change my mind if I saw engineering wages rise, concerted action on the part of ceos to help control housing costs, and concerted action on the part of ceos to help fix US education and increase the domestic engineering pipeline; or concerted action on the part of ceos to police visa fraud (see infosys, or epic systems, etc).
I was raising the point regarding my position because that seemed to be the thesis of the article -- for people more in my position than for employees of companies on the scale of Microsoft, etc. We are not entering the US with the objective of taking other people's jobs. The only reason I applied for the H1B was because it was the legit path with the most reasonable chance to get cleared. I think it's the wrong kind of visa for a founder to attempt to get, there just isn't a better one.
So YC and people like me are hoping for a visa similar to the O1A, except right now that is expensive to file, vague in the conditions that need to be cleared, and usually needs you to foot a fat lawyer bill too. And it's a bit of a stretch to be applied to founders. Essentially, the existing visas are all hardly different from 10-15 (or more) years ago, times have changed, and the government has done nothing to accommodate the changes in the economy.
Refusing to support companies asking for friendly visa changes for free is employees' best bet at getting said companies to support employee-friendly changes.
Re: the one I know the most about, "removing the tie between the sponsoring company and the employee (so if he or she is underpaid he or she can easily switch jobs)" This is partially done already in AC21: http://immigrationroad.com/green-card/ac21-portability-chang...
The key word is portability, which is a much, much weaker tie between the sponsoring company and the employee, both in terms of job title/salary and switching employers.
However, it's incomplete because employer-based (EB) green card applications aren't portable, so there's still a horrible incentive system there that has a huge negative impact on H-1B-affected wages. Green card portability was included in S744, the comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) legislation, that just failed.
That said, these are all legislative changes. With the failure of CIR, it will be more than a few years before another major effort is attempted on immigration, and at least until January 2017 until even small immigration reforms will be proposed in Congress.
Flatly, there is no chance of any legislative effort succeeding in coming months or even years.
I don't know enough to say what the correct position is on H-1Bs, but I know that many people believe strongly in both sides. We're too small a community to solve the problem here, so all we can do is be caught up in it and have our proposals die like flies on a spider's web.
When I say we in this case, I mean the HN crowd and similar. We as in Americans can debate this issue all you like. But if I want a startup visa, then I want to avoid getting caught up in the H-1B debate.
A bargain! For you.
But with all this new visa drama going on, no updates in the visa extension process so far, and the broken promise that spouses will be able to work, I just told my company that I'll have to go back to Germany and work remote from there.
Plan B. But the benefit is that I will be able to live in a democratic country again, with a much better standard of living. It's only 7 hours and I worked remote for a couple of US companies before.
If companies need those foreigners why should the government on behalf of the unions intervene? Do they know better than the companies which is good for them?
It was proposed by the Department of Homeland Security in May, went through a 90 day public comment period, which is now closed. We're waiting for the official announcement.
http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20140123/NEWS/140129933...
With 700,000 people living in a city that used to hold over two million there's plenty of room.
The specific visa requested is the EB-2, which basically requires a Masters or PhD as the credential needed to establish exceptional ability in a specific field.
Do you have to prove residency in Detroit? Do you have to work for a company in Detroit? What if you pick up and leave? Do you get deported? How would they even track that?
as opposed to where the United States NEEDS them. I think we should give out visas to Masters and PhDs and allow those people to go where they please. That way... we would get the best people as well... not just the most desperate.
What's the benefit to the country if a new worker from abroad replaces a current worker but at a lower wage if that means the person 'usurped' needs state assistance or becomes under-employed (and bumps someone else from work to benefit-reliance)? Sure business owners probably benefit but such benefit seems pretty localised.
How about if you let a lot of foreign workers come in who are well skilled and they flood a field in such a way that no students leaving college in that field can get a job. The incoming worker likely can accept lower wages which local [likely] debt-laden students can't. The field falls flat - the local population stop training in that field and you've either got a future skill crisis or a long-term reliance on immigrant workers.
If you want to preference native/endemic population over immigrants at all then I think you need to be very specific in the immigration you allow.
Needless to say, the Infosys and Tatas of the world do have a highly developed lobbying arm. As one example of a supportive research group: http://www.offshoreinsights.com/
Startups don't have anything like this, and the tech companies don't want to rock the boat with their outsourcing partners.
To learn more, look at the Hatch amendment to S744 (comprehensive immigration reform): http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/05/22/hatch_amendme...
Honestly, I've spent so long trying to keep startup visa out of the H-1B debate that I'm just not that familiar with it.
I don't disagree with you, but I don't have a sense of the political landscape to give you an answer that isn't a pure guess.
One concern might be the ability to game the system, but I think with the right parameters that could be minimized.
The goal of expanding the criteria definitions to more broadly mesh up with the lifecycle of successful startups and linking in the investor signal parameter into the review process will be to change that curve to be much more bunched up against the 1 month bins.
And yes, part of our argument was that startup founders /are/ doing all of these things already. Just it takes time that kills startups, and startups are also doing a lot of extraneous work (e.g. chasing NYT coverage when more TC or re/code coverage is what's needed to get another wave of early adopters or investor interest for that next round's buzz) to qualify for the visa when they should instead be focusing on product and traction.