If you think we could use a few more jobs in the U.S. right about now, you should know about the Startup Visa, an idea that has been gaining momentum in the blogosphere since last spring. Last month, Senators John Kerry and Richard Lugar introduced a bill that would create a new class of visa for foreign-born entrepreneurs who start companies (and attract funding for them) here.
Ex- Cantabrigian Paul Graham, an entrepreneur who sold an e-commerce company to Yahoo in the late 1990s and is now well known as the founder of Y Combinator, got things rolling last April with a post titled "The Founder Visa." Graham wrote:
The biggest constraint on the number of new startups that get created in the US is not tax policy or employment law or even Sarbanes-Oxley. It's that we won't let the people who want to start them into the country.
Letting just 10,000 startup founders into the country each year could have a visible effect on the economy. If we assume four people per startup, which is probably an overestimate, that's 2500 new companies. Each year. They wouldn't all grow as big as Google, but out of 2500 some would come close.
By definition these 10,000 founders wouldn't be taking jobs from Americans: it could be part of the terms of the visa that they couldn't work for existing companies, only new ones they'd founded. In fact they'd cause there to be more jobs for Americans, because the companies they started would hire more employees as they grew.
To read the full, original article click on this link: In support of the Startup Visa - Innovation Economy - Boston.com
Author: Scott Kirsner
