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Comment by leelin | Hacker News Reader

Personally, I think the more wealth and brains we have in the country the better, but $100K seems cheap enough to invite lots of shady cases.

I could start the "Visa Arbitrage Angel Fund" that only makes $100K investments into startups with $20K+ in the bank, then require the startup buy me out one week after closing for $120K (or make monthly payments of $10K for a year, or some other wacky clause that makes my investment an awful loan instead of a real investment). Now we've invented a way for foreigners with $20K to buy a visa.

  The proposed program would make more visas available to
  entrepreneurs who have at least $250,000 in funding from a
  U.S.-based venture capital firm, or $100,000 in angel funding.

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Wealthy foreigners already do buy their way into the States through the EB-5 visa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EB-5_visa

The startup visa seeks to change the EB-5 visa to include people who aren't wealthy, but would also create jobs in the US by starting viable companies.

This is an interesting link. I always wondered how much money I would need to buy my way into permanent residency in any country in the world. (I am assuming that the USA is among the most difficult -- those with expertise, please correct me if I'm wrong.) It's one of those useful benchmarks for how rich "rich" is.

The price is high, but not astoundingly high, if I'm reading this right. You need $500k in capital that you're willing to invest in "certain qualified investments or regional centers with high unemployment rates". You don't even necessarily have to lose the $500k, or even lose anything. You just need the capital.

Then it might interest you that Panama requires only proof that you made $500/month to get a retirement visa

Interesting, but as I understand it this $500 is supposed to be your real pension, not some other form of income, thus requiring most of visitors of HN to wait some half a century until retirement in Panama :)

The alternative is to buy a house for $200,000

You probably could - and one could make the argument that someone that industrious is exactly the kind of person you'd want.

However, the visa status is contingent on the company following through with its business plan to create X job and/or take in $1M of revenue. If the company isn't doing that (or if "the investment in the commercial enterprise was intended solely as a means of evading the immigration laws of the United States" - which seems like it would cover what you're describing), the visa gets pulled and the deportation process begins.

One can also imagine that INS would keep a very tight leash on the program in its first few years to make sure this isn't happening.

> the visa gets pulled and the deportation process begins.

> One can also imagine that INS would keep a very tight leash on the program in its first few years to make sure this isn't happening.

Experience with student and vacation visas suggests otherwise.

Interesting idea, but won't this allow wealthy foreigners to buy their way into the States?

how is that different from:

The current system grants 10,000 visas each year primarily to investors that have financed over $1 million with plans to create at least 10 full-time positions.

except it would allow for more relaxed terms?

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