Start-up Visas

“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.”

Paul Kedrosky and Brad Feld: Start-up Visas Can Jump-Start the Economy - WSJ.com

(via fred-wilson)



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My 2c: I just don’t know why this is not fully understood - start-ups create jobs. Pretty much all job creation comes from start-ups. Well I do understand actually. It’s the racism and xenophobia rampant in the thinking of members and congress who like to pander to extremist elements because they tend to vote. They drive the conversation and agenda, but we need to do EVERYTHING we can in the start-up community to support this cause.