If you're a Chinese engineer that can create 4 jobs and generate $600,000 in revenue at a company you create in the US, you should be allowed to immigate regardless of whether a "qualified super angel investor" "sponsors" you. You should be able to immigrate regardless of whether you can purchase a postage stamp to request the visa. You should be able to immigrate regardless of whether you're willing to wear pants.

Immigration carve-outs, like this one which clearly targets VC-based companies, come with a raft of unintended consequences. Look at the massive abuses generated by the H1-B visa program, where employers use their untenably lopsided negotiating position to lower working conditions for everyone by cheating immigrants. Here, we've substituted VCs for employers, and given immigrants 2 arbitrary escape hatches (generate 5 jobs, generate $1MM in revenue).

This is the wrong path for immigration reform.

Anything you do to make it more fair makes it more gameable. Graham likes to point out that people like Ron Conway are excellent people indeed, who would never game the startup visa. Who cares? You've never heard of the people who you really have to worry about with this bill.

Anything you do to make it less gameable makes it less fair. VCs are compensated for their investments by investment returns when their companies are acquired or go public. We don't need to create a new form of compensation for them by giving them a feed of entrepreneurs who are beholden to them for their family's residency in the US.

Immigration reform is a hard problem. Immigration is broken. This problem is urgent. We should address it. But I think this bill is a terrible way to do it, and that it creates more harm than it ameliorates.