in terms of timing fred mentioned:
"So I was thrilled to hear Senator Schumer's optimism last night that we will get "comprehensive immigration reform" in 2011, after the midterm elections". is this inline with what you're hearing on the front-line?

So I'm supportive of any legislation that makes it easier for the best and brightest from any country, who want to come here, to do so.

However, I'd also like to see legislation that aggressively supports both US citizens and foreign citizens on "Startup Visa's" in actually delivering funding opportunities so everyone has some time/resources to actually make those companies a success.

Today most government economic support is aimed at supporting banks or the top 500 existing large businesses. Virtually nothing is available from the public sector to directly help small businesses, even less startups, get going and succeed.

I've called for a long time for the SBIR program to be expanded into a full fledged government-backed seed fund that can give small grants and loans to startups. Given that traditional Angels and VC's have nearly completely abandoed the seed stage and nearly completely abandonded supporting first time entrepreneurs it's left to the public sector to fill this need.

I'll be writing to Senator Udall asking him to also look at this "Getting started" problem for first time US and foreign entrepreneurs. The country needs a LOT of people to transition to the entrepreneur mindest and traditional VC's have never been in a position, and certainly aren't now, to support a really big chunk of the workforce becoming entrepreneurs and employees of startup companies.

So lets really push the pedal to the floor and give both the budding foreign entrepreneurs and budding US citizen entrepreneurs the funding opportunities they(we) need to remake our economy and provent our society from heading into decline as the 20th century Fortune 500 economic model rusts out from the inside and collapses.