Thread: Sen. Lugar proposes Start-Up Visa Program

What guarantee would this legislation contain that the employees of these start ups are US citizens?

http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/201 ... ss_WSJBlog

With the endorsement of more than 100 venture capitalists, Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Richard Luger (R-Ind.) introduced the Startup Visa Act (opens PDF document), a bill that if passed would make it easier for immigrant entrepreneurs to work in the U.S. Foreigners would be able to secure visas here if they can obtain at least $100,000 from a sponsoring angel investor or at least $250,000 from a qualified venture capital firm. Within two years, the start-up must create five new jobs, raise at least $1 million or generate at least $1 million in revenue. (Learn more here.) Essentially, this bill is designed to boost the number of EB-5 visas available to foreign entrepreneurs by lowering thresholds; under current law, only 3,000 EB-5 visas are reserved for foreign entrepreneurs who must secure at least $1 million (or $500,000 in certain regions) and create 10 jobs within two years. If this new bill sounds like “déjÃ* vu all over again,â€

What about Muslims terrorists or of shady backgrounds, that have that kind of money?
We have enough of the Muslim Mafia and Muslim Brotherhood already inthe Whitehouse.

We have CAIR here too!

They have been labeled by our FBI as a terrorist organization.
Now in court, it has been proved the organization doesn't EVEN exist
because they haven't ever registered as a group.
Either way, this country allows terrorists to live here among us?
WHY?
Other country kick them out, why don't we.........?
Besides that they have a "friend" in the Whitehouse.

Time to read another stupid bill and clog the switchboards!

Ive been looking for a bill number on it. So far it has not gained much support.

The bill number should be available soon, either tonight or tomorrow a.m. I'll keep checking as well.

READ ACT HERE
http://startupvisa.files.wordpress.com/ ... inal-1.pdf


START UP VISA HOME PAGE
http://startupvisa.com/

boy are you people on top of things! ^5

Try S.3029
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D ... X:/bss/|

New Start-up Visa Promises: Create Jobs, Get a Green Card

Pending legislation would allow foreign entrepreneurs to stay in the U.S. if backed by angels or VCs -- and if they can create jobs.

By Courtney Rubin | Feb 26, 2010

Amid reports of the damage brain drain inflicts on the economy, Senators John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, Wednesday introduced the Start-up Visa Act, which would open up the U.S. to immigrant entrepreneurs.

If passed, the bill would grant foreigners U.S. visas if they can secure at least $100,000 from a sponsoring angel investor or at least $250,000 from a qualified venture capital firm. After two years, if the immigrant entrepreneur can create five or more jobs (hiring his or her children or spouse is not included), attract an additional $1 million in investment, or produce $1 million in revenue, he or she can become a legal resident.

More than 100 heavyweight angel investors and venture capitalists are backing the act, including LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Mobius Venture Capital's Brad Feld. In a letter of support, they complained that "it is often impossible" for immigrant entrepreneurs to get a visa to stay in the U.S. "Even in cases where the founders already have a visa of some sort, they typically can't use this visa to start a company. As a result, they often have to leave our country to start their company, resulting in a loss of innovative entrepreneurs and the correspondingly created jobs in the U.S." (For ways to support the visa, click here.)

The VCs' passion isn't surprising when you consider that 25 percent of America's venture-backed, publicly-traded businesses – among them Google, Yahoo!, eBay and Intel – have been founded or co-founded by immigrants, according to the National Venture Capital Association (which also supports the bill.) An NVCA report on the subject also concluded that foreign entrepreneurs are more likely to build companies that create high-tech, high paying jobs. Meanwhile, Richard Herman, a Cleveland immigration lawyer and the author of Immigrant, Inc.: Why Immigrant Entrepreneurs Are Driving the New Economy, claims nearly all of the net job creation in the past 20 years has come from companies less than five years old. "The Start-up Visa should be something to help turbo-charge American entrepreneurship and get our juices flowing again," he blogged.

Currently, there is a class of visa called EB-5 that's much harder to get: It requires immigrants to invest at least $1 million in the U.S. and employ 10 people. The H1B highly skilled immigrant visa is limited to 65,000, with an additional 20,000 for holders of advanced degrees – not much when you consider that U.S. universities pump out 1 science graduate for every five China does. But unlike H-1B visa holders, foreigners granted Start-up Visas wouldn't be taking existing jobs.

Though only 4 percent of bills become law, supporters are hoping the Start-up Visa's chances of making it onto the books are better because there already is a similar visa-reform initiative pending in the House of Representatives. That effort is thanks to Jared Polis, a first-term Democrat from Colorado -- and the founder of Proflowers.com and Bluemountain.com, both of which he sold in nine-figure deals. It's anybody's guess whether the fact that Polis's initiatives have been bundled into a controversial wider immigration reform bill, called the "Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America's Security and Prosperity Act of 2009," will help or hurt its chances of survival.

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the nonprofit Center for Immigration Studies think tank, told Polis's local paper The Daily Camera that "there is a much stronger case" for Start-up Visas than, say, for expanding guest worker programs or family-based immigration, both of which are included in the larger reform bill. She said of Polis's proposals: "There's a much more obvious benefit to the United States."

http://www.inc.com/news/articles/2010/0 ... posed.html

What do you think? Is a start-up visa a smart way of attracting entrepreneurial immigrants to the U.S.?

Links within the original are available by clicking on the source link above.

Reverse Auction for Investor Visas – Sen. Kerry Drops Price to $100,000

By David North, March 2, 2010

It's bad enough that people can buy their way into the United States, as described in a previous blog.
http://www.cis.org/north/sellinggreencards2

But if a bill (S. 3029) introduced by Senator John Kerry (D-MA) passes the price will be reduced to $100,000. The price was once was $1 million, then it fell to $500,000.

And the $100,000 does not even have to be your money.

For years the Congress set the price of an investor visa at $1 million, and the investment had to produce ten jobs for someone other than the migrant investor's family. Currently, you have to put up half a million and some consultant will figure out the needed "indirect" job-creating benefits, in the program as outlined by USCIS.

As pointed out in the earlier blog, the half-million-dollar investment, once examined, turned out to actually cost the investor $113,500 and it would produce green cards for everyone in the family; so, if there were five in the family, that would be $22,700 per visa.

The latest proposal, though it may have some advantages over prior ones, has reduced the initial investment to $100,000 if the would-be immigrant can get it from a "sponsoring angel investor", or $250,000 from a qualified venture capital firm, according to an article in Inc., a magazine for investors.

The investment is supposed to produce five (non-family) jobs in two years, or attract $1 million more in investment, or produce $1 million in revenue. In contrast, the current EB-5 program, in its half-million-dollar version, allows the investor to withdraw the initial investment after two, or more likely, three years, and has a fuzzy definition of what job creation is to be expected.

The magazine article was enthusiastic about the idea, and spent only a few lines on the detailed program requirements.

I suppose the immigrant arriving with $100,000 worth of someone else's money, which would be invested in the U.S., is a slightly better economic deal for the U.S. than somebody's brother and his children (the nieces and nephews) arriving with nothing more than the clothes on their backs, which happens frequently under our current laws.

But $1,000,000, down to $500,000, dwindling down to somebody else's $100,000 – that borders on insulting.

http://www.cis.org/north/selling-green-cards-3