Foreign Student Entp and Yel Visa – you are a Hobbits (aka real entrepreneurs) We support you.

@biggiesu – you are an "evil man" – that's a terrible idea to give VCs all the leverage.

Lindsay – you an orc – if you were a real entrepreneur you'd know the TN-1 Visa is for "contractors" and doesn't last long enough to build a prosperous company.

What all this Lord of the Rings talk? – Check out Lord of Visa to a see where you fit into this movement- http://blog.vidli.com/startup-visa/

Late last year I moved to the US to expand my business. In all honesty, it has been a difficult path. Other than to invest $1,00,000 under the EB-5 visa there are few avenues for me to be on the ground to do the leg work in the US. Luckily I have an engineering degree behind me, allowing me to gain an E3 visa (visa for Australian professionals). For my purpose the visa was crippling in that I needed to work as a part time engineer leaving only my spare time for work on expanding our business. It was a sacrifice I had to make for the better of the company. The red tape did slow progress for our company, delaying our launch in the US by 12 months.

I understand the current limitations on immigration are in place to prevent abuse of the system. However for companies like mine, the system is a deterrent. Despite that, the US government should be thankful for my persistence; our company has already injected $200,000 into the US economy and will invest another $1,000,000 in the foreseeable future. All of this would not have been possible without my move to the US.

I don't see any harm in the creation of a visa that allows individuals to travel to the US for an extended period on the purpose of creating business. If, and this is a very big IF, the individual in receipt of the visa is a responsible person they won't earn an income in the US (outside of gaining capital for their venture), they will only bring external funds into the country (to pay for living expenses). Unfortunately, for each rule created a new possibility for cheating the system arises. Therefore, expanding on an existing visa, and making a VC responsible for the applicant may be a step in the right direction.

A thought to end on: how do individuals travel to meet the VC. Most VC's I have dealt with will only invest after a face to face meeting. Alien's from countries like Australia, New Zealand, UK and most of Western Europe can travel on a 90 day visa waiver program, however for the rest of the world travel to the US, particularly on repeat visits, is a difficult process. Should the visa proposed within this discussion allow for travel to the US for the interviewing process?

Also, "sponsoring" is a loaded word. Not sure what that means legally. How many individual investors will formally want to sponsor someone? Seems like a lot of baggage/liability? I think the "adequately funded" criterion should be simply something that an immigration officer checks off a checklist.

If a VC wants to "sponsor" someone, they probably (not sure about this one) can already do so via the H1B. The founder would be an employee of the VC firm, get paid by the VC firm, and work on the startup that the VC firm has ownership in.

I would also recommend building in some sort of hiring window vs. forcing people to have x US citizens as employees on day zero. Say x US employees within 12 months of the provisional visa being issued.

So if you want to talk politics, then let's talk politics: Change the debate to, "It makes no sense to have India/China/Russia reap the benefits of all these new jobs and wealth while we are stuck behind pointless red tape." Now, the 'no-gamers' are on the defensive instead of you being on the defensive.

As long as the question is "How do you prevent gaming?" you will lose. Because you can't, plain and simple. Moreover, reducing the scope of gaming doesn't get you any points either — it just reinforces the original accusation (note the absence of any discussion of cost-benefit below.)

So on the next official, simply say that we'll put reasonable safeguards in place, but that this is about creating jobs plain and simple. We can't afford to have the next great technology industries be started in France because we were worried about red-tape. Just try it.

I am more concerned with green cards (immigrant visas) and the backlog attached than for entrepreneurs' visas.

What about a loan of the money from a non-family member (an issue I addressed in my follow-up post, linked above)? That's not from the applicant or a family member, but would satisfy the particular concerns above, and is the more likely case.

I agree with jasonj below that the visa could be more successful if reframed as a "jobs creator visa", which is the central point I think. Remove the focus from those words that scare a chunk of the voting public "foreigner" and "immigrant".