[miloshh]

It's sad how the founders visa isn't even close to reality yet, and already has vocal opponents bringing up bogus reasons why it's a bad thing. How long will it take until somebody complains about "foreigners taking away startup opportunities from Americans"?

[joe_the_user]

Uh, while some folks may bring up racist or otherwise ridiculous objection to this idea, sachinag, bokonist and others have brought up well thought-out objections that I haven't seen answered with much thought (the claim that tourist visas are the only thing subject to abuse seems hardly creditable but I'll argue more if someone fleshes out this one existing counter-argument).

It seems like the founder's visa already has a lot of emotional traction with people but immigration isn't something should be decided by emotional resonance but by well thought-out arguments - if you take the discussion to the emotional level, things won't go well for those favoring immigration.

[miloshh]

The thoughtful objections have not been against the idea as such, but mostly against the proposal that a board of investors or government officials would decide who is good enough. That would indeed a problem - startups that VCs or government approve would likely be the ones immitating the previous big thing, rather than building the next big thing. But I think a board is not necessary. In my opinion, all that's needed is that the founders

1. have bachelor's degrees, 2. register a corporation, 3. start with at least $X in the company account.

The value of X is up to debate, but it should not matter which investors they received the money from. Details can be worked out.

[joe_the_user]

Many well-informed criticism of state actions aren't against the goals of the intervention as such but merely against all the possible implementation those goals.

[nopassrecover]

Well as it stands you can get a visa based on simply having a sponsoring employer. This just moves from sponsoring employer to sponsoring VC.

[gruseom]

the claim that tourist visas are the only thing subject to abuse

I didn't say that or anything like it, and I don't see how the point I was making could have been any clearer.

[ilkhd2]

I do not see anything bogus in my reasons. There a lo mor important problems to be solved for making the market for software/internet startups better place. Namely - fixing pharmaceutical industry which is main reason why such an evil corporation like USPTO exists, which inflicts problems on software/internet industry by means of issuing bogus patents for buttons on webpages so on. I kno many American people who suffered a loot from patent lawsuits. Heck, even Reaearch on Motion has been bitten by bogus patent.

[maxwin]

this is a logical fallacy. Other more important issues don't make this issue less important. This is a hackers website not a health care/doctors website.

[jhancock]

The topic is a visa proposal which proposes to "hack our economy". Although I don't completely agree with likhd2, bringing up health care is of relevance if fixing certain of those issues would create more jobs and startups than this visa proposal.

[ilkhd2]

What you are saying is logical fallacy, in fact.

1. More important issues do make other issues make other issues less important after the have been taken into consideration by definition of word "more" and less. After more important issues are taken care of - well yes, the do not alter the priority of other problems.

2."Hackers" are people, and the topic of this talk is not about computers either; if you are about to start political campaign you can not tal about RoR, hadoop, clouds or whatever else technological; you gotta take into account, real old like humanity issues - healthcre, fraud, flee of capital; externalities of robbing countries of enterpreneurs.

[ilkhd2]

I knew that not especially bright people would read my post and think that is about doctors. No, my post is about patents: USPTO is US Patent authority, that gives patents for all industries; it is carried/lobbyed by pharma, that itself have millions of questionable patents, and very interested to leave thing as they are; attempt to dismantle software patents would disturb the swamp, and as side effect should be prevented.