Why did the author have to hire someone abroad to come in? We have so much talent sitting right here in the US.<p>For example, I live in a small town with 3 high end customer service call centers that I know about (there's probably more I don't), and the rates they pay are well below national average because the cost of living is low here. In my area one could build a team of world-class customer service reps in a matter of weeks, pay them better than any place in the area, and have an experienced and high quality staff immediately available when more staff are needed.<p>Of course I'm not knocking Santiago; having the ability and the qualities necessary to build a quality customer service team is extremely valuable no matter where you are.
For the record, the demonstrated effect of US tech workers visa caps is less jobs <i>for US-born workers</i> too (as the economy is artificially slowed down as a whole).<p>For instance it is estimated that during the recession over 200,000 jobs <i>for US-born workers</i> weren't created due to immigration policy restrictions: <a href="http://www.renewoureconomy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/pnae_h1b.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.renewoureconomy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/pn...</a>
I find this logic bizarre: "The US should also learn a lesson here. Because of the current, non-sensical immigration laws, Americans lost sixteen jobs."<p>I don't see the connection. You wanted to hire someone on a visa - not a US citizen. You couldn't, so instead of looking for one person within the country (possibly somewhere cheaper than where your business is), you decided to hire him and 15 other non-citizens.<p>I don't think that has anything to do with immigration law being messed up. That has to do with <i>you</i> making a decision to hire 16 people in another country.<p>That's not a bad thing, but it's just not what you're claiming it is.
This person seems like they would have been the right person for this job.<p>Apart from the people complaining about the restrictions of H-1B's their guy was willing to accede to those restrictions.<p>These regulations are designed to let people like this guy come work in these situations.<p>The issue was that too many requests were filed so an unfair system (lottery) was used to determine who would even be evaluated. Because of this high volume of requests, two things happen. First of all, you can't properly verify if the requests are legitimate (a specialized worker, unrivaled in this position) or illegitimate (a cheaper worker, willing to put up with under-market conditions for the benefit of leaving a worse foreign situation). Secondly, when the validity of a request isn't checked thoroughly, it's too easy to abuse and the number of illegitimate requests go up, making it take even more resources to get through requests.<p>It sucks. The better solution is to make fair rules, and have the resources to apply them fairly. Unfortunately, hiring more government workers to be able to better process and make sure good foreign workers don't get left out of the country is not a politically safe move to make, while keeping them foreigners from stealing American jobs is more appealing to a public worried about unemployment. Trying to convince them that being able to hire a guy from out of the country means that more jobs will open up is not a straightforward thing to do.
This foolish reasoning leans pretty strongly on the logical fallacy that it is in the best interest of everyone for all new businesses to be founded in the US, when in fact, it is in the best interest of everyone for new businesses to be founded all over the world, creating jobs everywhere.<p>This, in fact, has created the immigration supply and demand problem that the OP finds frustrating.<p>Build your business in columbia. Sell things over the internet or whatever your crashed ass website does, and live a happy life.<p>stop whining.
Why does it matter anymore? Even most undocumented foreigners pay taxes... as long as you pay taxes, why does it matter?<p>Why does imperialism/nationalism still exist? Why does it matter where you came out of a vagina - why should that determine your opportunities (through limiting where you can work)?<p>In the modern world, we'd be better off considering everyone citizens of the world and dropping the attitude we have about our borders.
I wonder what will happen when "the money" realize the US (and SV/SF) is one of the worse places to assemble a team and is only there because of, guess what, the money.<p>You can get work visas for lots of interesting places (Canada, Europe, etc) in a much shorter time and for a smaller cost<p>So, yeah, I wouldn't bother with Silicon Valley
He makes an interesting claim, that immigration policy is doing more harm to American jobs than helping them. That said, having discovered that the team in Columbia is performing well, he's worked around the situation.<p>Unfortunately, hiring is just one piece of many puzzles that have to be solved when building your business. In 3 to 5 years, or at his first big 'liquidity' event (acquisition or what ever), where he switches over from 'startup' to 'S&P 500 material', that is when the other externalities of these decisions will be visible, in the future looking back. At that time, and that will be a good data point going forward. The cautionary tale is to let a decision that is working for you <i>now</i> define its total value. Business decisions have very long tails that stretch into the future.
I am a developer that was born in a third-world country in Central America. There aren't many good opportunities here, but I was lucky enough to land a remote job with a US company, but before I was considering moving to the US and getting a job there. I guess next time I should consider a different country. Maybe Canada? Or somewhere in Europe?
Why do people always complain so much about the US immigration?<p>From what I have heard from friends abroad is that its just as hard if not harder in other places.<p>For example in Costa Rica, just to be able to legally get a cellphone for yourself you must: be a citizen, a legal resident, or own/start a business. And we arent talking about a job here, just getting a cellphone.
You should probably fix your website before you extol the virtues of outsourcing. That said, I think immigration should be more open to everyone. Big companies get H1-B workers bring wages down for engineers and programmers. Agriculture, construction and the restaurant industry also thrive on legal and illegal immigration and also bring the wages down in those industries. Doctors, lawyers, accounts, etc exist in a protected class of workers. We should open the gates for H1-B style doctors, lawyers, accountants, and managers.
I haven't been able to read the article because it's not opening for me. But the headline sounds like a cheap shot on US immigration policies. But that's just idiocy. The US lets more immigrants in each year than any other country in the world.<p><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2012/11/18/is-the-u-s-the-most-immigrant-friendly-country-in-the-world/" rel="nofollow">http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2012/11/18/is-th...</a><p>That article tries to make the argument that the US is still not doing well with immigration because the total population of immigrants compared to the general population ranks about 23d. But still, if you look at absolute numbers, the US still allows the most immigrants of any other country. Those who try to argue that our immigration system is broken simply have some alternate agenda or hold some sort of spite toward the US, if you ask me.