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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

#471

Post by Kluny »

refurb wrote: post #348
Kluny wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but you get healthcare and being non-white isn't illegal, so that helps. Also - not really? The highest federal tax bracket in Canada is 33%. The highest in the states is 39%. The highest provincial rate in BC is 12% and that's about the same as California. I'm sure there's a lot of variation depending on an individual's situation, but you're really deluding yourself if you think American taxes are low, for the…

Yes, but you get healthcare and being non-white isn't illegal, so that helps. That made me chuckle. You think Canada doesn't have racists? Good lord. And sure, if you just look at the income tax rates BC looks reasonable. Of course, if you look closer at the actual income brackets for each rate, it looks very different. That doesn't even include the sales tax (up to 15% in some provinces), taxes on alcohol, gas, etc.

I was being facetious, and yes, we do absolutely have racists, and yes, most of the people in our prisons are not white (they're First Nations, in our case).

Even so, we don't quite have the same legal system that seems to systematically lock up non-white people in bulk. A lower percentage of our population is in jail, they stay in for less time, and we have less violent crime overall. If you aren't white, I feel confident in saying you'll feel welcome here and won't get arrested for walking down the wrong street along at night.

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

#472

Post by chongli »

jimmyk wrote: post #458
chongli wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I didn't suggest that at all. Read again. Police officers have a completely different view of immigrants than do people on college campuses.

You said "If you collected statistics about Americans in the back of a squad car, you'd conclude that Americans are a bunch of criminals (shocker of shockers).". I'm challenging you on that. I think your statistics would show that certain classes of Americans are comparatively very criminally oriented, and certain classes of Americans are not. Similarly, if you collected statistics about foreigners in the back of a s…

I think your statistics would show that certain classes of Americans are comparatively very criminally oriented, and certain classes of Americans are not.

I didn't say anything about certain classes of Americans. I said that if you sampled the back of a squad car, you'd conclude that Americans are a bunch of criminals in general. That is the point. Asking a police officer about their experiences with immigrants is extremely biased. Just as asking a surgeon about athletes is biased (hint: surgeons have a lot more contact with injured athletes than the average person).

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

#473

Post by h4nkoslo »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #459
h4nkoslo wrote: post #228

Good. The entire premise of the internet is that it allows coordination at low latency over distance. It's also probably not fantastic for the United States to be strip mining the entire >130 IQ population of eg Sudan and packing them into SF/NY/DC to work on ad optimization when they're desperately needed by their own people; setting up infrastructure to work remotely is a great first step to eliminating the brain d…

I like the way your world-view treats intelligent people. Instead of having them being independent agents, there's some form of ownership of them... such that if they head off to foreign lands to pursue what they feel is a better life and earn more money, then it's a theft of community property. All Sudanese should be happy with their lot in life and either work to improve it or rot . So how dare these Western compan…

The disturbance you feel is likely at least partly cognitive dissonance at the idea of open borders amounting to labor colonialism.

It's an interesting idea, wouldn't you say? What are the effects of ensuring Sudan or wherever is unable to maintain a functional local elite? Are they good or bad, on balance? If we strip-mine all of their potentially capable administrators, do we have an obligation to administer their state for them, or just airdrop rice every couple years, or what?

The idea that states and people have reciprocal obligations beyond Maximum GDP isn't exactly novel.

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

#474

Post by briandear »

khuey wrote: post #297
xiaoma wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree that visas are a problem but I disagree that they will be "the problem" to unseat Silicon Valley as the world nexus of startups. I've spent most my adult life in Asia and have lived in several countries and cities that claim to be very serious about becoming the next tech hub. None of them have very liberal immigration policies. All have visas for highly skilled workers, all have visas for entrepre…

I agree that the most critical weakeness of Silicon Valley is real estate costs. I find it hard to imagine Beijing as a serious competitor though. If it were going to be anywhere in China I would expect it to be Shenzhen.

Beijing? Right with the Great Firewall, it's a ridiculous place to run a tech company. With the air pollution it's a ridiculous place to live. I lived for many years in Shanghai but ultimately moved because it was nearly impossible to do anything tech related that relied on standard tools such as Github or marketing venues such as Facebook, etc.

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

#475

Post by krisdol »

exabrial wrote: post #155
minikites wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> trying to separate fact from hysteria Painting the people who oppose the policy as "hysterical" isn't neutral and I bet that's what people are reacting to.

Personaly I oppose the policy. I think blocking an entire nation for the crimes of an acute minority is stupid. However the reaction from the media and the excitement over hypotheticals I have no other description for other than Hysteria. It's not useful to overreact, and it makes having rational discussion about the topic difficult.

The whole ban is a hysterical overreaction, not the reporting on it.

Look, I'm all for better vetting of travelers to the US. But first, tell me what problems there are in the first place, and then tell me how you plan on fixing them. What's wrong with our current vetting process?

Banning travelers from countries carte-blanche "until we figure things out", with no identification of the original problem and no proposal for a fix, how is that something anyone can support? It is xenophobic, unreasonable, rooted in fiction, and in this case, it is a ban on muslims.

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

#476

Post by kintamanimatt »

jacquesm wrote: post #205
Mythanar wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dublin? Sure. Amsterdam - if you believe you can grow decent startup scene in location with 52% income taxes and 1.2% wealth tax and 21% VAT, I have a bridge to sell you. Silicon Valley happened before the tax madness, and there is now net wealth outflow to lower-tax locations.

52% income tax is only on income > 67K euros, below that it is tiered with the next level down being 40%. The wealth tax is subject to an exemption of the first 25K. Also important: there is no capital gains tax and healthcare costs are ~100 euros / month no matter what you earn.

It is still pretty high though. Maybe not the highest, but high enough that a lot of people will take into account when deciding for or against Amsterdam.

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

#477

Post by briandear »

neptunespear wrote: post #358
Pxtl wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be delicious and terrible irony if Vancouver took over the role of startup capital, since it is the only place with a more unaffordable housing market than the SF bay.

$600 CAD/month for a bedroom in a house that's close to frequent transit and in a low-crime area isn't hard to find if you don't have your heart set on living right in downtown Vancouver. I am not going to pay $2200/month to live in gangland-torn East Menlo Park.

And a salary that's a tiny fraction of SV (or anywhere in the US for that matter.) I recently had someone offering $35/hour for a "Lead Ruby Engineer" contract role in Vancouver. Salaries are ridiculously low there which even with cheaper housing, results in far less disposable income.

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

#478

Post by briandear »

clamprecht wrote: post #4

Wow. We often wonder how the Bay Area would be unseated as startup capital of the world. Maybe it'll be the US's immigration problem.

Ever tried to get a visa as an American for Europe or the U.K.? Good luck with that.

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

#479

Post by dominotw »

curiousfiddler wrote: post #448

If you don't provide opportunity and a good civil environment to brilliant/enterprising people, they will find a way elsewhere. And once Vancouver or any other city starts working for them, Silicon Valley will lose its exclusivity. The thing to note here is that this response from YC is not a political one, but a response that came out of market demand; it is pretty significant if it works out.

Been hearing this since late nineties about how inability to get visas is going to be the death of US tech industry. Absolutely nothing has changed since h1b visa was initially implemented, its almost exactly the same when as it was conceived. And yet U.S tech industry is not dead.

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

#480

Post by dragonwriter »

mehaveaccount wrote: post #214
clamprecht wrote: post #4

Wow. We often wonder how the Bay Area would be unseated as startup capital of the world. Maybe it'll be the US's immigration problem.

Calexit would allow California to bring in anyone they want though, and SF wouldn't have to worry about the US immigration policy screwing up it's tech scene. I'm looking forward to the Calexit proposition vote.

> Calexit would allow California to bring in anyone they want though

In the same way that secession allowed the Confederacy to do that.

The US has no equivalent of the EU's Article 50, and until it does, "Calexit" means a war that California is in no position to win.

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