This is absurd. I was originally considering moving to the US for my postgraduate studies, however, after speaking with peers I decided against it, as other countries that offer far more favorable visa terms exist. Currently, my leading option is New Zealand, bundled with their student visa is a permit to work 20 hours a week, and a year's residency after the completion of your program among other things.<p>While some of you may not view New Zealand with the admiration that you view the US, as its tech-scene isn't quite as developed. It is a beautiful country nonetheless, free healthcare is available for all residents and citizens, not to mention the all around natural beauty of it.<p>Don't get the wrong impression, there is no doubt that the US is a great place, but it isn't without its problems. I'm not trying to sell you on NZ, the point I'm trying to make is why should I have to bust my balls and save up $100k for a green card when I can have more lenient and reasonable terms in another country with an emerging tech scene?<p>Note: it is probably easier for entrepreneurs to supply $100K for a green card, however, I intentionally ignored that circumstance as they're a minority amongst immigrants and chose to discuss immigration to the US in general.<p>Bottomline: America unknowingly abuses and doesn't treat immigrants with the respect that they deserve, they contribute equally to the economy as any other demographic (if not more), and are a major part of high tech industries, and therefore, of the US economy.
This is eminently reasonable, so it'll never happen. I'd go a bit farther:<p>- $100,000 in cash money paid to the US Treasury earns an instant I-551 visa along with visas for a spouse and any immediate minor children.<p>- $50,000 buys you a temporary worker visa (2 years?) that isn't tied to an employer. The temporary visa residency time doesn't apply for the time period needed to gain citizenship. At the end of two years you either pay the same $100,000, apply through other means, or depart. On this visa, if you raise at least $200,000 worth of investment or have created $200,000 worth of jobs in your temporary residency period (e.g. 4 FTE @ $50k annual salary) the $100k fee is waived.<p>Each dollar amount is indexed to inflation and adjusted annually for new applicants.<p>Yes, it puts a price tag on residency which some might find unseemly but I think it quantifies a contribution to society and prevents political gamesmanship.
Asinine idea of the day, there are some many wrong aspects it's even difficult where to start.<p>First, $100k is a big but not absurd amount of money for an American or European (it's roughly 1 year salary of a good engineer), but everywhere else in the world it's much harder to save that kind of money - it's closer, say, to the price of a decent house for a middle-class family.<p>The efffort to save that money will be very different per country of origin, which is very unfair. A Brazilian engineer has 3X better wages than an equivalent Chinese engineer, due to different currency valuation and salary standards.<p>People will start paying for this not with cash but with bank loans. These will be relatively high-risk loans so in practice, people will pay $100k to the US treasury, and maybe another $50-100k in interest to some private bank. And even if the loan is from an US bank, this doesn't necessarily mean "even more money injected in the American economy" - these days, money that goes to banks rarely benefits society in any significant way.<p>Having $100k in cash doesn't necessarily prove that you have the kind of skills that would ensure a well-paid job, and benefit the US economy. Maybe you are a mediocre professional, but you just inherited this money. Or your family helped realize their loved son's immigration dream, so you can only pay for the green card because dad sold his house. Or you just worked your ass off for 20 years in low-pay jobs, having a lot of discipline to save money. Or you made a loan (item above), maybe using family's property as collateral so you don't even have the merit for that loan. End result, a low-skilled worker being granted a green card and maybe becoming a liability to Social Security after failing to get an US job.
<i>"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."</i><p>Ok, so now for some people, its gonna cost $100K, to make it evident.<p>I think my irony meter just broke!<p>------------------------------<p>edit: I'm also guilty of not paying proper attention to the title: <i>"A Modest Proposal..."</i> [1]. Sorry.<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal</a>
As someone who has been going through the green card process for over 3 years now, $100k seems cheap to get rid of all the expense, effort and risk required to do it legitimately under the current system.<p>Having said that, simply "selling entry" would lead to a lot of rich people moving here and buying up property, driving prices sky-high(er) in coastal cities.<p>This is the issue right now in London where lots of Arab and Russian oligarch-types taking advantage of non-domicile tax laws drive up the cost of living but don't contribute to the economy in a meaningful way. Before you say "trickle down", sure they spend money on nannies and posh food, but that's trivial compared to the vast fortunes they store and control outside the UK.<p>Something like an investment or startup visa would help to ensure that people are coming here to be productive members of society. There's the EB-5 ($1m+ and ridiculous amounts of red tape) and the E-2 (Arbitrary amount around $100k, but no route to permanent residence), but both are broken programs.
I am a green card holder, and while I wish I could tell you what it took, all I know from the process is that it took my dad from 2000 till 2004 to even be allowed to start the paperwork and then it wasn't until 2005 that we actually received our green cards. So long as you have a company sponsoring you it is not that difficult to get a green card.<p>It takes time, a lot of it, money and lawyers. Oh, and a complete family medical history, blood draws, and pictures and prints.<p>As a green card holder I have the same rights as any American (while on American soil, the marines won't come rescue me for example as I am still a Dutch citizen), the only right green card holders do not get is the right to vote. Which I find semi ironic considering that we are still taxed the same, but we don't get to choose our representation... something the United States was founded on.
The green card already has a $1M tag, even if it is not a simple transaction
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EB-5_visa" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EB-5_visa</a><p>Even so, The idea is not bad, since it is talking about skilled workers and EB5 is for investors
<p><pre><code> Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
</code></pre>
So long as they can pay more than two years average income?<p>Anyone up for building a new country?
"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free", and make them bring $100k in unmarked bills.<p>I think we can all agree the current system is broken. I don't know what a better one is, but whatever it is needs to make room for people who can't afford a $100k entry fee, but would contribute to American society in other ways.
What about abuse?<p>Wouldn't this invite loan sharks lending money to relatively poor unemployed people in other countries, selling them the American dream and make them work on slavery-like terms for decades until they pay of their debt?
I would suggest the same to Europe. Get piece of land in south Europe which may host 10million people. Create 28th experimental member country of EU with values similar to USA, such as freedom and money-rulez. Families may buy a house and citizenship with travel rights and easier work permits around the europe for 1 million euros (USD1.33M) per person only valid for investors, some experts and tech-engineers. This way Europe may suck the elite of the developing nations and may collect 10 trillion Euros in 5 years to pay the debts of failing Euro members.
An automatic green card for immigrants who earn more than $100k annual is a much better idea instead. Such people are very likely well educated and contributing at a high level to their respective professions. They should be exactly the kind of people America wants to keep.
I would like to just see a bi-lateral agreement between the eu and the us for work so you could give an american a job in europe more easily and also work in the us more easily. Having been hiring it's a pain to have to refuse candidates from the us because spain will makes it close to impossible to grant a working visa at the moment.<p>As an alternative they could also just do what australia does which is a skilled immigrant system where you score points for your background.
This isn't that absurd, right now the great secret of US immigration is that someone with $1M USD of surplus liquid savings can definitely get on the green card track with the advice of their attorney.
> Why don’t we let more of them join us? There are two common objections: they will drive down wages, or they will be a drain on tax-funded programs.<p>Both these objections are dead wrong. The truth is that the US economy needs immigration to work. If you doubt it, just look at Japan.<p>In fact, immigration is the largest wealth transfer program from developing countries to the developed.<p>It is already bad enough that poor countries are paying for the upbringing, training and education of these skilled migrants for which they get no compensation. To compound this with this additional tax would be criminal.
As an American, let me preface this by saying that I am in no way opposed to immigration. I am in no way opposed to other cultures. Many of my good friends are not Americans.<p>Here is my problem, though - I look around my floor in a NYC office (I'm a software engineer) and I see very few people who are American citizens.<p>To me, that is very discouraging. It shows that me that Americans who live in the US are becoming less competitive than people from other countries when it comes to technical careers.<p>Again, let me strongly state that I'm have no problem with people from other countries coming to work here - I'm just making an observation that it is somewhat sad that American companies simply cannot find enough Americans to do jobs in America.<p>So what happens if we make the immigration process far easier? I see a lot of complaints in this thread about how difficult/how long of a process it is. But what happens when people from other countries flood in? What happens to the fewer competitive Americans here? Suddenly, it's more expensive to hire them. More expensive to keep them on.<p>I think I have legitimate concerns. They make me less inclined to support making the process easier. Maybe I'm wrong about what I suspect will happen if we let people flood in - and if you think I'm wrong, I'm more than happy to examine any resources that you feel might help me change my mind. However, I don't think I'm wrong. I think it would be a disaster for American workers.
From an individual perspective, if you were to put a price on all the uncertainty involved and dealing with things out of your control 100k seems to be a reasonable price to pay. If you are an entrepreneur, this helps you to get over a big mental block, not worry about wrong things and focus on important things like building great products or keep trying. This seems to be a sensible option for all those h1b employees in their initial steps to be startup founders.
Michael Bloomberg has advocated passing a law letting immigrants get a green card as long as they buy a house and live in it for five or ten years. That would probably work a lot better than paying a fee to the federal government, would fix the housing crisis and the economy, and get a lot of rich foreigners to come live in the United States.
Every time I read or listen to this kind of proposals, I always think that we, as foreign entrepreneurs, can't wait for slow bureaucratic law proposals on immigration and green card.<p>Unfortunately it is today that we face a big handicap. We need a better immigration law now: seriously, now.<p>Without a long visa or green card we can't do long-term plans. It's harder to hire people, if we have to leave the day after tomorrow to our country to get/update/renew our visas. We can't take a long leasing for an office or an house. The real problem is that we can't live in a long-term mindset, and this makes an already difficult game (start a company, grow, hire people, create new jobs) harder to play.<p>We're are here, in a foreign country, hardly trying to make the difference, and start our businesses, realize our ideas, invest a part of our life here, in this country. And we need more help.
If say 100,000 people got in for $100,000 in the first year, thats $10 billion in revenue... we accrue around $4 billion in new debt an average day. Doesn't seem significant to me?
Our system is messed up. I would let anyone in with a degree from one of the top 25 or so schools abroad. IIT, Tokyo, Cambridge, etc. Also anyone with a 2 year grad degree in the top 20 in their field in the US can stay. Only lastly would I add buying your way in, though 100k seems low. I would think 200k, with an alternative of making a 500k investment instead of retiring the debt.
10B is nothing in terms of public debt.<p>Every policy must be driven by policy objectives.<p>For instance, if you want a risk-free way to create jobs in the short term for existing residents in US, a startup visa is a long bet. (There may be other policy objectives that could be achieved with startup visa, for instance acquisition of talent etc, but none of these do much for US's immediate needs)
A very good idea, in my opinion, but I think $100k is too steep. Make it $50k and I would support this. I see that there are lot of negative commenters on techcrunch, particularly from non-americans. That's also interesting.
I would write the check right now if this was passed into law. Plus I already paid the US the <i>tax</i> on earning the $100k net (ie more like $150k)<p>Also, this is what it costs just to get an E2 visa right now.
Brilliant. I wasn't sure if he was serious, or if this was a satirical comment on the immigration system.<p>Then I looked at the title of the post (it's been wrongly condensed here on HN).
the implied premise is wrong..<p>Startups do not produce jobs..especially web 2.0 statups<p>What produces jobs is middle-income Americans who have disposable income to buy products..ie product demand.<p>in fact we should reverse the 30 year trend of tax breaks for the 1% and transfer those tax breaks to middle-income Americans
Really a wonderful idea to make USA the safe haven of all criminals around the world. This is the most brain-dead, totally crazy, utterly stupid political proposal I've read in a long time.<p>This sort of thinking (money can buy everything), by the way, makes me sick. This is wrong on so many levels. What floors me even more is to see all HN comments pretending that this is a good idea. At least the techcrunch comments seem to get it.
$100K might seem too little for people already in the US looking for a green card and it probably is. However, for people outside the US, it is still a significant sum of money. If they are motivated enough to find it, they'll probably be working hard enough to pay it back (ie. don't worry about that person hogging welfare). What I like about this proposal is that it makes it possible for the "right kind of immigrant" to apply as opposed to the $1M that is the current threshold. If you've $1M to spare, the GC is just an expensive membership card to a club and will be treated as such. With no regard to being a citizen, the person will look at it as a pure business transaction. On the other hand, the person scraping together 100K is pretty much betting on their future and making this (the US) their home for multiple generations. These are the kind of immigrants that are desirable.