Delaware C incorporation foreign co-founder might generate later troubles? | Hacker News Reader

Delaware C incorporation foreign co-founder might generate later troubles?

4 pointsquestionMan4 comments

We are about to get incorporated in Delaware with a C corp. One cofounder is a green card holder about to become citizen, the other is on work visa (H1B). Can any of the paperwork related to the incorporation present future challenges when it comes to have the company sponsor a green card for the second cofounder? Or even just support the H1B so the other cofounder can be dedicated full time to the venture? Interested in any ressources we can find. We plan on using Clerky, but unless I missed something it doesn't go that far into incorporation explanations. I feel like this kind of legal information is always so hard to find, even with hundreds of Delaware C corp in SF...

Our startup is a Delaware C Corp and we are all foreign citizen. We haven't had any problem related to the fact of being foreign. On the VISA we are all on E-2 because it was easier and we avoided the lottery of the H-1B. For what I remember the point is if the H-1B holder could be fired from the company. Here are some information from the USCIS: http://www.uscis.gov/eir/visa-guide/entrepreneur-visa-guide and http://www.uscis.gov/news/public-releases-topic/business-imm.... Notice that the same point are valid for sponsoring the green card (EB visas).

If you have concerns about this, you should be asking an attorney, not random people on HN. I'd guess that the H-1B issues are governed by Federal law, but there may be other things about corporate officers who are non-citizens that may be specific to Delaware law. It sounds like a complex situation, and using off-the-shelf forms from Clerky could easily get you in trouble if you don't have competent legal advice.

Clerky cofounder here - we have a very brief support article that highlights what you may want to discuss with an attorney on this topic:

http://support.clerky.com/customer/portal/articles/1175815-w...

I is seeing that article that made us think there might be complications indeed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com