And for anyone interested in the topic, the article is already out of date, as entrepreneurial parole is currently blocked due to a regulatory freeze: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/white-house-orders-imm...
1,678 karma · joined September 23, 2009
craig (at) globaleir (dot) org
50-70 days from university handshake to visa in hand.
About 10% right now
While founders are getting their startups off the ground, they're working 8-10 hours a week as mentors at the center for entrepreneurship.
It's just too much of a risk to flout the clearly defined congressional cap, and since we can help founders, we want to ensure we can continue to do so as we scale rather than calling down the wrath of Congress.
IANAL
Happy to answer any questions folks have about the cap exemption and the process we're setting up.
Now that all of these universities have entrepreneurship centers, certain options opened up for founders.
Also, J-1 being run by State rather than DHS/USCIS introduces some extra weird things.
There are lots of different options and none are all that good a fit for founders.
If you've got a year advance notice, you can set things up for the L-1. If you've got the ability to generate old media press and can raise $500k (rule of thumb), then O-1 is a good fit. If you're from the right country with $50k-150k, then E-2. If you're from Australia, E-3.
For the O-1 in particular, the three criteria we tend to use are media coverage, mentorship/conferences, and high salary for those who have been employed previously to becoming entrepreneurs.
YC asked the White House to make some tweaks to the O-1 to be a more straightforward path for founders, but the White House went in a different direction with something yet to be announced.
We have the Global EIR program which might be of assistance. Our flagship program in Boston: http://masstech.org/innovation-institute/projects-and-initia...
We have a pathway that takes advantage of cap-exemptions built into the H-1B program and partnerships with universities. It's pretty straightforward, and in exchange for a few months of part-time work, you'll draw a runway-extending salary and be sponsored for a work visa, after which you'll have a visa runway to raise capital more easily and then switch over to 100% startup time.
www.globaleir.org will have more in a short while.
Various states who have launched or are considering launching have different requirements. CO does require either an undergrad or masters' degree, so work experience wouldn't count. MA is Masters' only.
Keep in mind that the H-1B itself does offer work equivalency, but it's 3 years work experience → 1 year of academic training, which means that 5+ years is unlikely to meet the USCIS test requirements.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Link: http://shusterman.com/extraordinaryabilityimmigration.html
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...
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.
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.
More research is needed here.
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.
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.