por admin » Jue Nov 22, 2012 8:31 pm
Los empresarios que invierten en US podrian recibir visas especiales para quedarse en el pais.
Se esta haciendo un nuevo intento por parte de grupos de empresarios e inversionistas para que se otorgue una visa especial que le permitiria a los extranjeros que abran companias en US quedarse en el pais.
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TECHNOLOGYNovember 22, 2012, 6:37 p.m. ET
Startup Visas Get New Push
Senate Bill Would Help Foreign-Born Entrepreneurs Stay, but It Faces Hurdles
By VAUHINI VARA
Jason Henry for The Wall Street Journal
Asaf Darash, center, an Israeli immigrant, outside the San Francisco headquarters of Regpack, a software company he started in 2010.
SAN FRANCISCO—A coalition of entrepreneurs, investors and advocacy groups is pressing its campaign for a special visa that would allow foreigners who launch companies to stay in the U.S.
The group hopes to avoid situations like the one faced by Asaf Darash. Mr. Darash, 38 years old, who was born in Israel and raised there and in Australia, started software firm Regpack Inc. after moving to the U.S. in 2010. He entered the country on a J-2 visa associated with his wife's research in an academic exchange program.
In April, his company applied for an H-1B visa—a type for foreign employees of companies in the U.S.—for Mr. Darash to stay and build his company. Regpack employs 15 people at its San Francisco headquarters.
In September, Mr. Darash's visa application was rejected. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services sent him a letter saying it wasn't convinced that Regpack had a "valid employer-employee relationship" with him.
.Companies seeking H-1B visas for their employees must prove, among other things, that they control the worker's employment—including being able to fire him or her. That can be hard for startup founders to demonstrate, in part because they are unlikely to fire themselves. Mr. Darash thinks he got in trouble because of that and because of a problem with the paperwork for his company's board of directors.
Now Mr. Darash, who used his own money to start Regpack, is trying for an E-2 visa. This type is for investors who come from countries that have a treaty to do business with the U.S., invest a substantial amount in a company and are in the country to "develop and direct" that business.
A CIS spokesman, Bill Wright, declined to comment on Mr. Darash's situation, but said in an email that the agency "is evaluating the challenges and limitations faced by entrepreneurs in filing for and obtaining H-1B visas enabling them to work for their own or other startup companies, and continues to review these issues as they relate to current guidance on the employer-employee relationship."
Now, tech executives, advocacy groups and others are pushing Congress to pass the Startup Act 2.0 bill, which was introduced this year by Sen. Jerry Moran (R., Kan.) and co-sponsored by a bipartisan group including Sens. Mark Warner (D., Va.) and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.).
The Obama administration hasn't commented on the bill, but the president gave a nod to certain immigrants, including those who want to "start new businesses," in his January State of the Union address. "Send me a law that gives them the chance to earn their citizenship," he said. "I will sign it right away."
The Senate bill calls for a number of changes to immigration law. Among them, it would create a new type of visa allowing foreign-born entrepreneurs legally in the U.S. to stay if they can raise $100,000 in capital and hire at least two American workers during their first year holding the visa.
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.People who would launch any type of business—from an Internet startup to a restaurant to a trash-hauling operation—would qualify for one of a total of 75,000 visas. The visa would last four years as long as the entrepreneur employed an average of five full-time employees during the final three years of the visa. After that, he or she could apply for a green card to stay in the country—and work—as a permanent resident. The legislation doesn't specify whether the capital must come from U.S. investors.
The proposed bill faces hurdles. A previous effort to change the policy, 2011's bipartisan Startup Visa Act, didn't make it out of committee because election-year priorities took precedence.
"I believe that we are losing the battle for entrepreneurial talent in the United States, and we need policies in place that turn that around," Sen. Moran said.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, previously quiet on the issue, has teamed up in recent weeks with policy groups to figure out how to push for startup visas. Last year, several Silicon Valley entrepreneurs created Engine Advocacy, a nonprofit that put startup visas on a shortlist of U.S. policy priorities.
The Partnership for a New American Economy, started in 2010 by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and chief executives including Boeing Co.'s BA +0.84%Jim McNerney, said its members have published 21 opinion pieces on the topic this year, compared with none in 2010. The group, which also advocates for other changes to immigration law, has more than 500 members, up from 200 as of June 2011. The Partnership's co-chairs include Rupert Murdoch, chairman of The Wall Street Journal's parent company, News Corp NWSA -0.79%.
Unlike countries such as Canada and New Zealand, the U.S. doesn't set aside visas for entrepreneurs. That means immigrants who start U.S. companies often apply for other types of visas, like the H-1B meant for employees and O-1 visas for people whose "extraordinary ability" has garnered them national or international acclaim.
"It's the single stupidest policy the U.S. government has around high-tech immigration," said Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google Inc. GOOG -0.61%"These people will create billions of dollars in investment in the economy and provide us with the ability to be world class in every industry."
Some who oppose the bill say they would like to see a startup visa paired with broader immigration-policy changes. Other opponents generally are seeking stricter immigration policies and warn of fraud that could arise from the bill, if immigrants started companies that may not be legitimate simply to get a visa.
"The history of these investment-visa programs hasn't been particularly good," said Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which supports curbing immigration. He pointed to the EB-5 program, which offers visas to foreigners who invest in job creation in the U.S. but has faced problems tracking whether some investments had real impact.
The lack of visas for startup founders is having a chilling effect on immigrant entrepreneurship, said Jeremy Robbins, director of the Partnership for a New American Economy.
While foreign students continue to flock to U.S. universities, the proportion of Silicon Valley companies founded by immigrants has slipped. A recent study by the Kauffman Foundation showed that 44% of Silicon Valley companies started since 2006 had immigrant founders, down from 52% for companies started between 1995 and 2005.
Mr. Darash's dilemma isn't unusual. Collin Vine, a 27-year-old Canadian who co-founded San Francisco startup Zirtual Inc., is stuck in Vancouver, B.C., while waiting to see if his H-1B visa application will go through.
To get the visa, Mr. Vine and his co-founders at Zirtual, a business that connects people with personal assistants through the Internet, invented the position of corporate wellness director, suited to Mr. Vine's bachelor's degree in kinesiology.
"My application for the H-1B is different from my actual role at the company," Mr. Vine said. "We've actually had to spin a tall tale because of the difficulty of applying."