Today, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) and Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) introduced the StartUp Visa Act of 2010. The group of us behind the Startup Visa project have been working closely with key members of each Senators’ staff on this and we are incredibly pleased with the proposed bill.
Following is the text from the press release announcing the bill:
“Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today introduced legislation to drive job creation and increase America’s global competiveness by helping immigrant entrepreneurs secure visas to the United States.
The StartUp Visa Act of 2010 will allow an immigrant entrepreneur to receive a two year visa if he or she can show that a qualified U.S. investor is willing to dedicate a significant sum – a minimum of $250,000 – to the immigrant’s startup venture.
“Global competition for talent and investment grows more intense daily and the United States must step up or be left behind,” said Sen. Kerry. “Everywhere Dick Lugar and I travel for the Foreign Relations Committee, we see firsthand the entrepreneurial spirit driving the economies of our competitors. Creating a new magnet for innovations and innovators to come to the United States and create jobs here will offer our economy a double shot in the arm – robust job creation at home and reaffirmation that we’re the world’s best place to do business.”
“Our country should strive to attract to the United States the most talented and highly skilled entrepreneurs. We should channel the power of innovative thinkers from around the world and American investors towards creating jobs and encouraging economic growth and future prosperity,” said Ranking Member Lugar.
The StartUp Visa Act of 2010 would amend immigration law to create a new EB-6 category for immigrant entrepreneurs, drawing from existing visas under the EB-5 category, which permits foreign nationals who invest at least $1 million into the U.S., and thereby create ten jobs, to obtain a green card. After proving that he or she has secured initial investment capital and if, after two years, the immigrant entrepreneur can show that he or she has generated at least five full-time jobs in the United States, attracted $1 million in additional investment capital or achieved $1 million in revenue, then he or she would receive permanent legal resident status.
More than 160 venture capitalists from across the country have endorsed the senators’ proposal. That letter of support is attached.”
The support from the venture capital and super angel community has been fantastic. Now that we have both a sponsored house bill (HR 4259 – sponsored by Jared Polis (D-CO)) and a sponsored senate bill, it’s time to crank up the grassroots support. Look for a few specific things to do in the next few days on both this blog and the Startup Visa blog.
As the Startup Visa initiative continues to pick up momentum, we are now collecting stories from immigrants who have either started or tried to start their company in the US. We are interested in any aspect of your story and – while we’d like to be able to have your contact info – recognize that some people will want their story to be anonymous (which is ok with us.)
We’re looking to collect as many stories as we can by February 27th (11pm) so that we’ll be able to put them together in an appropriate format for the Geeks on a Plane trip to DC on 3/4/10 – 3/6/10 which will include a delegation of folks (including me) talking about the Startup Visa.
If you have a Startup Visa story about your immigration challenges to tell, please help us out!
My dad sent me an incredible thirty minute interview of Ayn Rand by Mike Wallace in 1959 which I just watched on my iPhone during a treadmill run. I’m a fan of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and, while I’m intrigued by a lot of Ayn Rand’s philosophy and writing, I don’t consider myself an Objectivist.
One of the quotes I most love is John Galt’s statement “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for the sake of mine.” A while ago my mom made a painting out of this quote (it currently hangs in my partner Jason Mendelson’s house.)
Regardless of my philosophical perspective, I thought this interview was fascinating. While it’s 50 years old, the format and content is timeless. I think Ayn Rand was brilliant in her articulation of her philosophy and her perspective and did an excellent job of engaging with Wallace without running him over.
As we exit 2009, I encourage you to watch this, if only to have it stimulate your thinking. I expect some of you will love this and some will hate it, but I challenge anyone to say that “it didn’t cause me to think or react.”
As we finish up the year, I’m really pleased with the progress the Startup Visa gang is making. I started thinking about, writing, and working on this on 9/10/09 when I wrote the post The Founders Visa Movement. One quarter later, we’ve:
Shortly after I started talking to people in Congress about this it became clear that this wouldn’t be a 2009 legislative issue given the massive financial and health care reform issues being worked on in Congress. So – we decided to use Q409 to “figure this out” with a goal of launching aggressively in Q110 with the goal of having this be part of whatever immigration reform activity happens next year, especially in the context of a renewed push for job creation activity in the US.
In addition to the Startup Visa OpEd that Paul Kedrosky and I wrote and published in the Wall Street Journal, several other high profile thinkers have written great essays on this issue.
The Startup Visa And Why The Xenophobes Need To Go Back Into Their Caves: Vivek Wadhwa (Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University) wrote a great piece in TechCrunch.
Immigrant Scientists Create Jobs and Win Nobels: Susan Hockfield (MIT President) wrote a WSJ OpEd that – while not talking directly about the Startup Visa – clearly supports that overall effort and also reinforces my belief that any graduate with an advanced degree from a US college or university should get a green card stapled to his diploma.
While there are plenty of other articles in the mainstream media swirling around, ones in CNN Money such as Want to create jobs? Import entrepreneurs does a good job of laying it all out.
Many of you have asked how you can get involved. Look for a variety of easy ways to do this in Q1. And – a huge thank you for everyone out there that has helped in any way so far. In the mean time, feel free to add to the Wikipedia page of American Startups with Immigrant Founders.
After having a few conversations yesterday about the Startup Visa, I realized that I never posted the Wall Street Journal OpEd on the Startup Visa that Paul Kedrosky and I wrote and had published on 12/2/09. I don’t know the rules about reposting OpEd’s – I assume that since we wrote it I can republish it. If that’s not true, I’m sure some one will tell me. In the mean time, here it is:
Start-up Visas Can Jump-Start the Economy
Immigrant entrepreneurs are an engine of jobs and growth. We need more of them.
While fast-growing companies have long been the main source of new jobs and innovation, this country makes it outrageously difficult for immigrants to launch new companies here. This doesn’t make any sense. After all, Google, Pfizer, Intel, Yahoo, DuPont, eBay and Procter & Gamble are all former start-ups founded by immigrants. Where would this country be today without their world-changing innovations?
Immigrants have not only founded big, well-known companies. Foreign-born residents made up just 12.5% of the U.S. population in 2008. But nearly 40% of technology company founders and 52% of founders of companies in Silicon Valley.
Yet we don’t seem to care. We send recent, foreign-born university science and engineering graduates back to their own countries after their student visas expire—unless these creative sorts are willing to spend some of the most entrepreneurial years of their lives working in a big company under an H-1B visa after they finish their studies.
For those who studied elsewhere, but who nonetheless want to bring their job-creating ideas here, American policies treat them—the job-creating, trouble-making innovators that they are—as a cross between deadbeats and queue-jumpers. Why can’t they wait in line like everyone else to get a visa in five years or so? What’s their hurry?
Their hurry is Joseph Schumpeter’s hurry: They want to hustle out and disrupt markets when the opportunity arises.
In the 21st century those opportunities don’t wait for our interminable, employment-based visa programs. As a result rather than saying "Come and create jobs here" we, in effect, tell them to shove off. Come back when you have a few million in sales— at which point they will be rooted elsewhere and creating jobs somewhere else.
That needs to end now. Immigrants who come here to create companies create jobs. We need the jobs.
One good idea to make this process easier is to create a new visa for entrepreneurs, something that is increasingly being called by venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and angel investors a "start-up visa." It might work like this: If immigrant entrepreneurs want to start a company in the U.S. and are able to raise a moderate amount of money (perhaps as little as $125,000) from an accredited U.S.-based venture capital firm or qualified U.S.-based angel investors, we should let them start a company here. It could be a couple of founders with an idea—that’s it. We would give visas to the founders and welcome them in to our country.
Would it work every time? Of course not. It would fail more often than not. Start-ups often fail.
But having failed, the immigrant entrepreneurs could try again, and again. And as long as they are trying, raising money, creating jobs, and making sales, we would let them stay here. Founders of new companies are precious for a vibrant economy, and we should welcome them. Indeed, the country would be better served to find more of them.
Some will say a start-up visa program will be abused. They will say that it will become a way to end-run immigration rules, to jump the queue if you have money.
There are at least two answers to these objections. First, to get such a visa you would have to raise money from real investors. Second, Canada and other countries already allow entrepreneurs to start a company in their country. Shouldn’t the U.S. stop worrying so much about keeping these people out, and start worrying about bringing them in?
We also think science and engineering graduates should get visas stapled to their diplomas. You complete your higher education here, you get to stay so that you can get out and create jobs, innovate, and grow the economy. Uncle Sam wants you, if you’re a prospective entrepreneur.
The U.S. remains one of the most attractive countries for entrepreneurs. It has a culture of risk taking, capital formation, and an economic dynamism that is the envy of the world. This gives us a competitive edge that we should not let slip through our fingers.
Last week I did an hour long interview with Jon Hansen on the Startup Visa Movement titled Diminishing Prospects: How U.S. Policy is Undermining Entrepreneurial Vision. The interview is embedded below and Jon has a longer post up on his blog titled Snakes in a Playpen: Why U.S. Policy Regarding H-1B and EB-5 Visas is Outdated and Ineffective.
I haven’t done any long form interviews on this topic yet. I thought Jon did a great job of steering the conversation, pulling out some important perspectives, and helping cycle back to make sure the appropriate points were covered. If you are interested in this topic, I’d love to hear your reaction to this interview.
I’m getting three to five Startup Visa stories a week at this point. A few are straightforward but most are complex and intellectually frightening, including one I read through yesterday that almost caused my head to explode. When I was in Boston a few weeks ago I met with someone who told me their particular story very passionately and clearly. He then followed up with a short essay that he asked if I’d post publicly. While the story is a general one, it is short and sweet and nicely captures the sentiment that I’ve heard so many times since writing The Founders Visa Movement post.
Every night after I’ve checked off the task list for the startup I work on, followed-up with the people I’ve networked with, finished all my school work, I’ll stay up reading documentation on how I can stay in the country I have fallen in love with over the last nine months. I come from a culture in Sydney where my peers will become doctors, bankers and lawyers; where the idea of being a startup founder is correlated with merely being unemployed. Being familiar with the first generation immigrant story of my own parents escaping poverty in Communist China to Australia, where they’ve created wealth and jobs from their small grocery business, I was inspired to adopt my own journey to a foreign country. When I came to the United States, to take an opportunity to do a one year study abroad at Babson College, a school with a premier entrepreneurship program, I was optimistic.
Being in Boston, having visited both Silicon Valley and the Research Triangle, I mourn the fact my visa expires in December, the conclusion of my studies. Why is it so good here? How is it so different to back home? It’s not about the number of venture dollars, or the size of the business plan competitions, it’s not even the size of the market. It’s about an intangible in the ether. It’s about culture. For a first-time, young entrepreneur, environment is so fundamentally key. The couple of web tech, social media, or general startup networking events I go to every week act as shots in the arm. I always come back that much more energetic; that much more inspired. I speak with a serial entrepreneur who has seen the pattern many times before and provides me advice and encourages me to keep fighting. I meet another first-time entrepreneur suffering my pain, sharing that experience is motivating. I come across someone passionate about their vision, that energy is contagious. The startup journey is rarely a straight line and this keeps me going as a first-time entrepreneur.
And I’m one of the lucky ones. Currently I am looking at all options, but because I’m an Australian citizen, I’m most likely to immigrate to Toronto, as it’s the closest city with an entrepreneurial community to Boston. Many of my international peers at Babson, who hustle, who fight, who innovate and create, are forced home every year. Do they go and create wealth and jobs in their home country? This would be unfortunate for America not to capitalize on the investment in education. Worse still, because they no longer are tapped into the unique American culture of risk and creation; are we as a global society just entirely worst off?
As Stephen Colbert might say, “America, we are blowing it.”
Two things really tweaked me in the past 24 hours.
The FTC thing is just fucking stupid. Jeff Jarvis does a better takedown of it than I could ever do on his post FTC Regulates Our Speech. I’m not a journalist, nor do I pretend to be. I’m involved in some way in virtually everything I write about on this blog. While I don’t directly make money when you buy a product or service from one of the private companies I have an investment in, I have the potential of eventually making money if the company is more valuable. I do get a share of the ad revenue that appears alongside the articles and I get affiliate fees from some services like Amazon whenever I write about a book or movie, link to Amazon, and remember to include my affiliate link. These are all well known practices among bloggers that adding “disclosure to” in every post is tedious, pointless, and irrelevant.
Is this what the FTC should be spending it’s time on? I completely agree with Jarvis – this is about “free speech” – presumably I should be able to write about whatever I want on this blog (it is “my blog” after all) and you can decide to ignore me if you want. Oh – and no one pays me to write this blog so how does it become an FTC issue? I’ve seen some comments that this is aimed at payola – only impacting bloggers that get paid to write about products and services. But the language seems to include direct payments and indirect payments. Call me perplexed and confused. I wish there was a product called “perplexed and confused” that I could sell.
The The US Antitrust Inquiry of IBM is even weirder. As I read the NY Times article, it looks like a bunch of companies whining that IBM won’t license their mainframe software to them. This stems from a complaint filed by the Computer and Communication Industry Association whose members include Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Yahoo, Fujitsu, and a bunch of others. IBM is conspicuously absent from the membership list – I guess they made a mistake not joining since it looks like the argument being made could easily apply – in my experience – to business practices of Google, Microsoft, and Oracle. Two important quotes from the NY Times article.
“I.B.M.’s opposition to licensing its technology to outsiders is not enough to build a successful government antitrust case, said Andrew I. Gavil, a law professor at Howard University. More likely,
and
In the ruling in the private case last week, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of Federal District Court in Manhattan found that I.B.M. had invested heavily in its modern mainframe technology and its decision not to license it “does not constitute anticompetitive conduct.”
The only logical conclusion to this one is Gavil’s speculation that “the Justice Department is investigating to see if I.B.M. is engaged in other tactics that might be anticompetitive.” But based on what actual evidence?
Last week I was interviewed by the Denver Business Journal for an article on the StartupVisa Movement. Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO) – who represents the district in which I live – was also interviewed. Kevin Mann – the founder of Take Publishing (one of the TechStars 2009 companies) and a UK citizen – talked about his story. Good – and important – stuff – Polis wants foreign company founders to be allowed to stay in United States.
Eric Ries also put together a short two minute video describing the issue and highlighting Eric Diep, the co-founder of Quizzes (a very popular early Facebook app). The Eric’s explain the issue around visas for founders of companies and talk briefly about some of their activity on a recent trip to Washington DC.
As each day passes, I continue to get a steady flood of positive feedback and constructive suggestions about this from a wide variety of people. Thanks to everyone for engaging in this important conversation.