There is no legislative change being proposed. Rather, it's a regulatory change that YC is requesting.
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...).