A New Startup Founders Visa?

Portfolio.com reports that tech entrepreneurs support an effort by U.S. Representative Jared Polis (D-CO), who was a sucessful with several internet start-ups, to make it easier for foreign founders of investor-backed startups to secure visas to remain in the United States. Supporters see the effort as seeking to keep technology developed in the United States by foreign-born entrepreneurs in the United States.

Polis plans to introduce legislation that he hopes will stop the trend of immigrants starting companies in the United States that attract investors, but then the companies close or move abroad because the founder cannot legally stay here.  To me, it is unclear what the magnitude of the problem and thus whether there would be much economic gain from the new visas.  Still, it seems like a sensible fine-tuning of the U.S. immigration laws if economic benefits from immigration are important to the nation (which it seems that they should be).

The U.S. immigration laws make visas available to foreign investors in the United States, certain foreign workers at U.S. companies, and for workers at established foreign companies transferred to this country. But there is no visa for a foreign-born entrepreneur who has investor backing to start a U.S. company.

For more information on the Startup Founder Visa Movement, click here.

Hattip to Richard T. Herman.

KJ