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Let this new office get serious about founder's visa and immigration issues, and then we'll see if there's any truth to all the startup love.

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Why is that? There appears to be nothing resembling unanimous support for "founders visa" among entrepreneurs.

There's pretty near unanimous support among people who care about the issue at all. Startups that have immigration problems mostly would like such an option. And to those that don't, what difference would it make if another few thousand (mostly smart) immigrants were allowed to come to the US?

I'm with bokonist on this:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=556908

Particularly this comment:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=557298

bokonist's comments on this thread were incredibly good. I get the sense that I'm nowhere near him on the political spectrum, but I couldn't stop reading what he had to say about this and found him very persuasive.

It's true that if the government implemented such a program, they'd probably do a bad job. But they couldn't do worse than they're doing now, which is to turn people away at the borders.

If the strongest argument you can make against a proposed government policy is one that you could make against any government policy, then it's pretty good, as proposals for government policies go.

I agree that by default the government does things badly, and that the government ought therefore to do as little as possible. But immigration policy is an area where they're already acting, and going to continue to act. So it's reasonable to propose ways to act more intelligently.

bokonist even concedes that your proposal could be beneficial in the short term. It's what it does in the medium-long term that concerns him. So, I think the Founders Visa is bad policy. You asked, there's my response.

That aside, I'm with sachinag. This issue is a red herring. If we want to foster startups in the US, we should start by addressing barriers that face US citizens:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=832480

Red Herring implies deliberately misleading. It would be more accurate to describe it as one thread in an intrinsically parallel process.

Let it suffice to say that I didn't intend to accuse you of misleading anybody.

It's true that if the government implemented such a program, they'd probably do a bad job. But they couldn't do worse than they're doing now, which is to turn people away at the borders.

pg, you already said basically the same thing in the thread tptacek linked to: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=557340

A response follows in that thread.

There's pretty near unanimous support among people who care about the issue at all.

pg, this is absolutely false. Maybe you haven't been reading all of the recent HN threads on this issue, but the highest-rated comments tend to oppose founder's visas.

what difference would it make if another few thousand (mostly smart) immigrants were allowed to come to the US?

Multiple people have pointed out that a founder's visa program would have larger ramifications, and you've replied to at least one of them so you must have seen answers to this question.

There is widespread support for the idea of allowing founders to immigrate. There is scepticism that this can be executed in a way that is a net gain. Some people are sceptical at a practical level and others at a theoretical one.

thanks. I think that sums it up very nicely.

Incidentally, why do you keep creating new accounts?

I don't. My colleagues post on HN and we probably have the same external IP address. If you don't believe me, I will stop posting if you just ask. However, I don't see why you need to assume my guilt. I wonder if you still would have done that if I'd agreed with you earlier instead of disagreeing.

I was actually just curious. Usually when people create new accounts, it's because they want to say something they don't want associated with their main account. A few others do it to vote up their own comments. But neither seemed to be the case here.

The reason I thought you weren't a new user was that you used HN's idiosyncratic markdown subset on your first comment. That's very rare. But if you say you're different people, I'll take your word for it.

I see. Yes, I've been familiar with HN for a long time, partly because I've seen so many people post here.

I'm not hearing unanimous support.

I am disappointed that investors that openly support a founder visa have not published a pitch on par with what they expect from founders pitching to them. You guys should be able to write better pitches than anyone, right? You have access to the best data, right?

I don't think anyone expects your first essay that brought this issue to light to be anything more than an essay. It was well written and I agree with the general idea. But that's not enough to "fund" the deal. Where is the hard data on these assertions that investors are missing out and if they had access to founders visas, what the return would be to the economy.

When it comes to IT startups, I think its a tough hurdle to show there would be net job creation. Its my understanding that most IT value propositions, if achieved, result in a net reduction of labor. I know that at least one aspect of the value proposition for every IT project I've ever worked on in 20 years was to reduce labor costs. This was true from $250M enterprise projects to $50K bootstrapped ones.

Although I'm not hearing unanimous support for the founders visa, those that are questioning it do seem to be pro-immigration in general. So if there is a stir in these quarters, what happens when this issue gets in front of Americans that think building a wall covering the entire Mexican border is a smart and achievable goal?

There's pretty near unanimous support among people who care about the issue at all.

It's extremely illogical to equate not supporting the founder visa to not caring at all about the issue. I care about the issue and I don't support a founder visa. There are plenty more as well.

I'm a little suprised by your reply - I haven't seen an entrepreneur say "We don't really want a founders visa" either.

We've seen several threads on news.ycombinator on the need for a "founder's visa" and immigration reform. The current H1 visa system is cearly busted. If there is going to be a new office set up for early-stage entrepreneurs, this is certainly one of the important tasks at hand for the federal office.

The top-ranked comment on the most recent HN thread on Founders Visas argues against them:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=815457

Eyeballing the whole thread, it looks like support ran 50/50. Note that, for instance, arguing for a "more Canadian-style immigration policy" is not the same thing as supporting the Founders Visa proposal. We are allowed to believe simultaneously that H1-B is busted and the Founders Visa is a bad idea.

Wait, no, here's a more recent thread about Founders Visas. It's got 89 votes. The top comment opposes founders visas:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=832363

It refers to the HN thread on Graham's original post about Founders Visas. 196 votes on that post. Again, the top comment opposes the Visa:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=556908

I see many of these comments as criticisms of superficial implementation details, that don't necessarily indicate opposition to all variants of the Founders Visa idea.

Comment votes, top-comments or even prevalence of critical comments are not reliable indicators of net agreement/disagreement. Threads have lots of factors that cause criticism and disagreement to be over-represented, or cause quibbles to be misinterpreted as opposition.

I myself would criticize the 'investors panel' mechanism because I support the overall gist of any policy to increase founder immigration. Sure, I understand bokonist's critique and I'd prefer saner non-political mechanisms for boosting beneficial immigration.

But given that immigration policy will continue to be a bureaucratic mess -- there's no 'grand fix' proposal on the table as an alternative -- even a flawed program could be worthwhile. All the existing 'doors' through which immigrants enter are politically-flawed; why not have one more door, also admittedly flawed, through which a few more valuable immigrants might enter?

Most agree that things like the H1-B program are broken. We have tons of data over many years to support this.

The assertion that creating a founders visa enables more successful startups that in turn makes the economy grow (preferably sustainable growth) has not been proven at all. Its a very nice assertion, and I'd like to buy into it, but I have seen no meaningful data in support.

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