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YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#241

Post by echevil »

refurb wrote: post #43
GuiA wrote: post #40

The lead the US has had in science/engineering/technology over the past 70+ years is in no small part due to the massive brain drain from Europe, and the rest of the world, due to fascist regimes. If the US's new shiny fascist regime keeps progressing at this pace, you can bet that things will reverse quickly. Good bye, world leading startups, nobel prizes, top universities, etc. These things can happen faster than o…

If the US's new shiny fascist regime keeps progressing at this pace...the best thing countries like China could do right now is heavily fund things such as foreign PhD students. Wait, so you're saying everyone is leaving fascist USA, but China will be the beneficiary of that?

Have no fear. Immigrating to China is basically mission impossible for people with no existing ties.

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#242

Post by kps »

doh wrote: post #135
homakov wrote: post #121

Weird choice of country for this purpose. I wonder who needs visa to the US and doesn't need one to Canada, and I'm pretty sure the number is small.

As others pointed out, Canada recently made mandatory their eTA program which is very similar to US ESTA, so the differences are non-existent anymore. Original text: The number is huge. For instance the whole EU doesn't need visa for Canada [0] but it does for US (although it's called a waiver program [1], which guarantees nothing). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_Canada#Visa_exe... [1] https://trave…

For friendly Canada all you need is an Electronic Travel Authorization document, whereas the fascist US demands an Electronic System for Travel Authorization document.

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#243

Post by [deleted] »

doh wrote: post #135
homakov wrote: post #121

Weird choice of country for this purpose. I wonder who needs visa to the US and doesn't need one to Canada, and I'm pretty sure the number is small.

As others pointed out, Canada recently made mandatory their eTA program which is very similar to US ESTA, so the differences are non-existent anymore. Original text: The number is huge. For instance the whole EU doesn't need visa for Canada [0] but it does for US (although it's called a waiver program [1], which guarantees nothing). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_Canada#Visa_exe... [1] https://trave…

[deleted]

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#244

Post by yellow_postit »

monksy wrote: post #91
untog wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why did you feel that it was necessary to inject political commentary into this? The notion that we can remove politics from all the discussions we have is just silly. Especially when we're discussing immigration, something controlled by the governments we elect and the politicians that represent us. I'm not arguing that the OP's post was great and insightful ("fascist" is indeed not helpful to use without elaborat…

Never said to remove politics from the discussion. The point that you started with was how the technical topic had influence from politics (from another time). My point, don't make blanket inflammatory accusations of a current political party that just came into "rule" [I'm letting you get away with that claim] in the last two months). If you're going to interpolate, make a claim to the political action that occurred…

We already have direct cause: the religious based travel ban. to my knowledge there is no exception for a founders visa application if you are from this list of countries.

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#245

Post by echevil »

wpietri wrote: post #131
refurb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the US's new shiny fascist regime keeps progressing at this pace...the best thing countries like China could do right now is heavily fund things such as foreign PhD students. Wait, so you're saying everyone is leaving fascist USA, but China will be the beneficiary of that?

> Wait, so you're saying everyone is leaving fascist USA, but China will be the beneficiary of that? In recent years, the US has turned noticeably anti-science, anti-immigrant, anti-elite, and anti-government-support-of-almost-everything, including education, health care, the arts, science, and infrastructure. Whereas China has been energetic about pursuing global leadership in a variety of areas, and they're not shy…

Well, for one thing you'll need to learn to speak Chinese, and that'd be much harder than learning English. Also, it's close to impossible to immigrate to China at the moment.

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#246

Post by kbenson »

xiaoma wrote: post #223
kbenson wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Useful numbers, but in a discussion about what could happen, ultimately less informative than they seem. The U.S. can drastically reduce the citizenships they award, and China can start awarding permanent residencies or citizenship. That is one aspect of what China capitalizing on this might mean. China has shown itself willing to change to achieve what it wants.

Chinese concepts of race and nationality are hopelessly intertwined and Chinese nationalism has been increasing , not decreasing, over the past generation. In recent times, the very best chance of China becoming open—even in comparison to its neighbors—was in the late 80s... and we all know how that ended. The climate hasn't gotten close to being that tolerant since, and in the past five years, political control has…

> Of course it is possible to reverse course and open up, but it would take quite a bit of time to change in the ways you're suggesting.

Interestingly, it might not need to open up all that soon to still reap the benefits. If in the future the US is also not very open, but China is apparently making strides to become more open, that could affect long term planning.

I also wonder if China, having more control and less ethos built up around inherent fairness of immigration (if that's true?) might be able to just say "10+ years in China as an academic or high end research position in X/Y/Z industries will get your pernanent residence."

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#247

Post by pizzetta »

EternalData wrote: post #237

It's oddly ominous reading about America's rise on the back of textile patents taken from England and Europe, then poaching of German physics talent and scientific talent from across the world. Germany was, by far, the pre-eminent power in theoretical physics at the turn of the 20th century, with Einstein, Heisenberg, Planck & Born about to be at the peak of their powers. Then the country decided to turn on intellect…

I don' think the situation is as dire as people think. Europe exported many technical people during the war years and one would be hard pressed to say they are backwards because they lost talent. Japan as well is not very friendly to labor migrants and they are at the forefront of science in technology despite their small population size relative to other geographies.

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#248

Post by davidw »

apsec112 wrote: post #213
tptacek wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry so much. You have a mortal lock on the pipeline of first-time tech founders, and your cycles are overwhelmingly populated by graduates of US and European universities. Yes, a fair number of talented people from disfavored west Asian countries won't be able to start up here. That's OK: because of the way venture capital works, and because of YC's role in it, they really won't be able to start at all, and y…

"because of YC's role in it, they really won't be able to start at all" Not sure what the reasoning is here. How is YC doing anything to block people from starting companies? You don't lose anything by getting rejected from YC, other than the few days spent applying.

There are certain kinds of businesses - drug discovery - say, that take years and years to become profitable. It's not really possible to start them without a lot of capital. Not everything SV does is that way, but many companies are.

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#249

Post by EduardoBautista »

doh wrote: post #135
homakov wrote: post #121

Weird choice of country for this purpose. I wonder who needs visa to the US and doesn't need one to Canada, and I'm pretty sure the number is small.

As others pointed out, Canada recently made mandatory their eTA program which is very similar to US ESTA, so the differences are non-existent anymore. Original text: The number is huge. For instance the whole EU doesn't need visa for Canada [0] but it does for US (although it's called a waiver program [1], which guarantees nothing). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_Canada#Visa_exe... [1] https://trave…

The visa waiver program is not a visa, that's why it's called the "VISA waiver". It's basically the same process as visiting Canada.

Re: YC will hold interviews in Vancouver for founders who can’t get US visas

#250

Post by tspiteri »

alpha_squared wrote: post #48
davidw wrote: post #10

"Move fast and break things" indeed :-/ https://twitter.com/tqbf/status/839608371686801410

Wow, that's pretty far out of context. Far enough to imply the opposite of the statement's sentiment. For reference, the full quote by Altman is, > “Trump is the Silicon Valley candidate in every way except that the ideology is flipped,” said Sam Altman, a prominent technology leader, chief executive of Y Combinator and a major Hillary Clinton donor. “He’s an outsider. He took on a system he thought was broken and th…

Looking it another way: giving a quote like that which needs to be examined in full to make sure he does not support Trump, and which can so easily be interpreted to support Trump, is quite naive. When you're giving quotes you have to be extremely careful that it is not easy to take them out of context, because that "out of context" is exactly what most people reading the article will understand at first reading.
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