The Startup Visa is a proposed amendment to the U.S. immigration law to create a visa category for foreign entrepreneurs who have raised capital from qualified American investors. It aims at addressing the absence of a visa category for entrepreneurs raising outside funding. It is currently denominated in congress as the Startup Visa Act of 2011, as introduced on March 14, 2011. The Startup Visa Act has bi-partisan support.
The Startup Visa is a temporary immigrant visa, or conditional permanent resident visa (conditional green card) which converts to a permanent residency (green card) after two years if certain conditions are met.
The prospective Startup Visa is classified as an "Employment Based" visa, under a newly created EB-6 category.
Contents |
Foreign entrepreneurs who find themselves wanting to start a company in the United States are faced with no or limited visa options. The few visas offering residency and thus a path to citizenship applicable to entrepreneurs are visa categories such as the EB-1 visa, or the EB-5 visa, which were not designed for entrepreneurs in particular, and can only apply to an extremely limited number of entrepreneurs. Employment-based visas such as the EB-2 visa are not viable options for entrepreneurs and can be denied on the ground of the applicant owning significant stake in the sponsor company.
The new legislation provides visas to the following groups under certain conditions[1]:
The investor must be a qualified venture capitalist, a “super angel” (U.S. citizen who has made at least two equity investments of at least $50,000 every year for the previous three years), or a qualified government entity.
The Startup Visa does not allocate any new visa numbers but draws from unused numbers out of the EB-5 visa category (investor green card) which is limited to 9,940 visas, of which only 4,191 visas were used in fiscal year 2009.[2]
The office of Senator Lugar stressed the following statement "The creation of new visas is not authorized in this bill."[3]
In perspective, the U.S. admitted 1.13 million new legal permanent residents in the US in 2009, of which, only 12.7% were admitted through a selective process or "Employment-based" categories.[4]
Introduced in Senate on February 24, 2010, the Startup Visa Act of 2010 was left to expire in the Judiciary Committee at the end of the 111th Congress with no further legislative action having been taken on it.
The Startup Visa Act of 2011 has been introduced in Senate on March 14, 2011 by Sen. John Kerry [D-MA] and cosponsors Richard Lugar [R-IN], and Mark Udall [D-CO] under the bill S. 565, with Senators Kirsten Gillibrand [D-NY], Michael Bennet [D-CO], and Mark Warner [D-VA] joining on later as additional cosponsors.[5] In the House it has been introduced by Rep. Carolyn Maloney [D-NY14] under the bill H.R. 1114, with Rep. Bill Owens [D-NY23] supporting as a cosponsor.[6]
As of April 1, 2011, the Startup Visa Act is awaiting Committee review. It has to undergo a review with the respectives Judiciary committees and the Immigration subcommittees of the Senate and the House. According to Govtrack.us, "The majority of bills and resolutions never make it out of committee".[7]
A group of prominent American investors have been spearheading the Startup Visa since its inception and created the website StartupVisa.com:
Many other investors have officially pledged their support.[8]
These groups are known to support the Startup Visa (incomplete list):
Foreign entrepreneurs who have experienced the US immigration system as entrepreneurs are overwhelmingly supportive of the bill and have been increasingly joined by American entrepreneurs.[13]
The supporters of the Startup Visa are putting forward job-creation, benefit to the economy and innovation leadership to get voters' attention. The San Francisco-based startup Votizen launched in March 2011 featuring the Startup Visa, allowing citizens to directly send a support message to their representative about the Startup Visa.[14]
While the Startup Visa enjoys bi-partisan support and the White House have been repeatedly voicing support to principles relating to it, the Obama Administration have been notoriously silent on the Startup Visa Act, even through the Startup America initiative, introduced in January 2011. During a conversation hosted by The Economist on March 24, 2011, Aneesh Chopra, the United States CTO, responded the following to Vivek Wadhwa's question about the Startup Visa: "The President has been emphatically clear, his support for high-skill immigration, but to do so as part of a broader, comprehensive immigration reform program".[15]
This approach has drawn criticism from some supporters of the Startup Visa who see the White House as wanting to delay the bill for an undetermined length of time in order to include it in a Comprehensive Immigration Reform broadly covering legal and illegal immigration, viewed as politically "toxic" for the Startup Visa Act.[16]
Some actual immigration mishaps which the Startup Visa hopes to address have been covered in the documentary film Starting-Up In America, released on February 28, 2011.[17]
In most of the developed countries other than the United States, entrepreneurs are not facing the same scope of immigration issues because of the availability of point-based visa systems, and/or the absence of ownership restrictions on self-sponsored employment visas.
Since the first introduction of the Startup Visa Act in 2010, these countries have additionally implemented specific visas modeled after the Startup Visa:
Similar movements have emerged in the following countries: