Why the U.S. needs a new visa for foreigners who want to start businesses here.

The Startup Visa Act and Dream Act are crap. Why do we insist on building on our broken immigration policy?<p>We need to make immigration simple for all immigrants. We don't need to create more laws that require an immigrant to spent $100K in legal fees to some lawyer to fill out paperwork.<p>I think YCombinator has proven that a startup doesn't need tons of funding to get an idea going.<p>The biggest problem with government is they over complicate EVERYTHING! We need simple solutions to the problems, not another stack of laws to add to the (literal) truck load that already exists.<p>We need one (1) page form that someone can fill out to get a visa. If someone comes from Mexico (for example), they should be able to fill out this form and get a Visa the same day. If someone flies in from Germany they too should be able to fill out this one page form and get a visa right at the airport. There is no reason why someone should have to have $100K in funding for a business, another $100K for legal fees just to get in.<p>I think the approach should be applied to everything government does. Simplify, Reduce, Eliminate.<p>Another good example is paperwork to start a business. I should be able to fill out a simple form and be able to have a business up and running (Legally) in any city/state in the US - the same day I fill out the form. I don't understand why places like New York City make these kinds of things so difficult. It takes MONTHS to get a business LEGALLY up and running in a major city like New York, but that same business can be LEGALLY up and running in 1 day in Hong Kong.

I don't understand the funding requirements... Take someone like patio11, who's running a profitable business but not making a killing with it yet. Why not let him immigrate to the US, and run his business (and pay his taxes) there?<p>And what about someone who ran and sold a successful business in, say, Germany, and decides they would like to live in the Valley for a while. Let's say that person has a couple of hundred thousand dollars of wealth, is a proven bootstrapping entrepreneur, and wants to move to the Valley and bootstrap the next Facebook... Why stop them at the border?<p>Many valuable people want to move to the US, but by making it so damn difficult, the US misses out on enormous amounts of top talent.<p>Why not, instead, make immigration a straightforward process for anyone with some set of criteria, e.g. recognised science education or other degree from a top university, or track record of entrepreneurship, all of that with good credit score and no debt ... it makes sense to have entry requirements, but why are they so arbitrary?

Hopefully that won't pass.<p>If you have to get 250k under that law (versus 500k-million under the already existing immigration law) then it isn't going to help startups at all, the only thing it is going to do is to prevent a <i>real</i> startup visa law from ever being passed.<p>A real startup law would not put capital requirements on the company but would require its founders to be able to live of the income and to either hire people or grow a certain amount each year, which some checks to prevent them from being consultants.

From what I've seen so far this year in bills pushed by the House and Senate that had provisions to assist small businesses and entrepreneurs that have C-corps were weak at best. The originally proposed health legislation pushed by Reid and many other Democrats would have hurt small businesses hard, so they had to tone it down. Finally, a good bit of what I saw in Democratic campaigning this Fall seemed nationalistic, complaining that Republicans were sending jobs overseas, and implying that these Democratic candidates valued Americans getting jobs over foreigners. So, someone try to change my mind and prove to me why Reid and Kerry would be for legislation that would make it easier for foreign entrepreneurs to be successful in the U.S.? Sure Dick Lugar is a Republican, but this post seems to push the idea (imo) that Democrats want to help foreigners make money and that they are pro-small business, neither of which I have seen much evidence of recently. I don't believe Republicans will be loads better, btw. Small businesses and entrepreneurs aren't the most influencial lobbyists in the world, and while angels and VCs have some pull, the only reason they are getting attention now is because supporting small business and entrepreneurs is a politically popular idea.

Clinton successfully faced Outsourcing with Insourcing. Obama is trying to counter Outsourcing with Protectionism.