I'm very sorry. US immigration policy is highly arbitrary and irrational. I hope you succeed wherever you start, and still have the chance and desire to relocate to the US sometime in the future.
Today My US Investor Visa Application Was Denied
21–30 of 72 posts
Re: Today My US Investor Visa Application Was Denied
#22I support you man! Keep up the fight!
Re: Today My US Investor Visa Application Was Denied
#23I feel for you -- I live in Japan and visa issues are near and dear to my heart. If it makes you feel any better, you can have a successful business without being in the US, and should you later want to move the startup to the US having a successful business and all the fixings (such as a good immigration lawyer) will make the process quite a bit easier than it is when you're "just somebody with a gleam in his eye".…
I'll be getting to deal with Japanese immigration soon enough...
Re: Today My US Investor Visa Application Was Denied
#24I feel for you -- I live in Japan and visa issues are near and dear to my heart. If it makes you feel any better, you can have a successful business without being in the US, and should you later want to move the startup to the US having a successful business and all the fixings (such as a good immigration lawyer) will make the process quite a bit easier than it is when you're "just somebody with a gleam in his eye".…
I'm sure other Visas can be tough, but I got my spouse visa in Japan in a few weeks from the time I started. A couple simple forms, less than $100 in fees, and a couple trips to the immigration office. The US is ~$1,400, 6 months, multiple appointments, and a stack of paperwork for the same thing. Really pathetic. There's no excuse (no, not even volume).
I am guessing you are white and from a "tier 1" country? Your experience might have been very different coming from, say, Indonesia. They can go into much greater detail and require higher standards of evidence if they think there could be an economic motive to your move.
I can't speak to the US experience but it's basically the same deal in Australia - a good friend of mine got her spouse visa literally overnight from the Tokyo embassy, but I've heard stories about it taking 18 months to receive the same thing if the applicant is from a developing country.
The situation truly sucks, and I wish they could do a better, faster and more dignity-preserving job, but there is a lot of fraud and motivations of the applicant can often be questionable. A thai-chinese friend once told me that one of her friends needed to marry an Australian for visa reasons, and would pay $25k or more. That opened my eyes a bit. She could just make that much more working here. Guess the occupation.
There's no excuse, but they do have a lot to deal with.
Re: Today My US Investor Visa Application Was Denied
#25I feel for you -- I live in Japan and visa issues are near and dear to my heart. If it makes you feel any better, you can have a successful business without being in the US, and should you later want to move the startup to the US having a successful business and all the fixings (such as a good immigration lawyer) will make the process quite a bit easier than it is when you're "just somebody with a gleam in his eye".…
I'm sure other Visas can be tough, but I got my spouse visa in Japan in a few weeks from the time I started. A couple simple forms, less than $100 in fees, and a couple trips to the immigration office. The US is ~$1,400, 6 months, multiple appointments, and a stack of paperwork for the same thing. Really pathetic. There's no excuse (no, not even volume).
Spousal visas are treated very very differently from business visas in Japan, and I would think most countries. You are married to a citizen of the country, and it would be inhuman to deny you the right to live in the country of your spouse. Inhuman, but sadly all too common in some countries' immigration rules. I'm thinking of the UK citizen friend of mine working in silicon valley, married to a Japanese woman, who was separated from his child and wife for the better part of a year just because US immigration was fucking around with them.
Re: Today My US Investor Visa Application Was Denied
#26Given that most startups discussed here are Internet-related, enabling people to do things over the web, the fact that most VCs and entrepeneurs seem to think that you have to physically be in insanely expensive Silicon Valley is pure conformism ("You should be on a plane to Silicon Valley NOW!"). Of course, since they're the ones with money and networking, they turn this arbitrary dogma into a law of investing. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the long-run, this is an acpect that entrepeneurs outside the U.S. can turn against them and outcompete them. Of course it's insanely hard, it's like trying to outcompete romans 2000 years ago.
Re: Today My US Investor Visa Application Was Denied
#27This is another sad example of the US's twisted immigration policy. Brilliant entrepreneurs, scientists, and academics want to come in legally and are rejected, while thousands of others come in illegally.
First, we don't know what his idea was. Obviously he believes in it to have dropped so much cash on it already, but there are all sorts of things that people believe in (FSM FTW). That's not to slight his concept, since we haven't seen it, what's the point in passing judgement. And actually, your point illustrates quite effectively why there is illegal immigration. If the system is broken, people will try to work aro…
You can look at his startup in his profile - well, I'm presuming it's the same one, it does say "Founder and CEO".
Re: Today My US Investor Visa Application Was Denied
#28The funny thing is he is trying to be legit. For 5-10k he could've married some random woman in US to get in, same for his wife.
It's not surprising power is shifting out of US and Europe.
Re: Today My US Investor Visa Application Was Denied
#29This is another sad example of the US's twisted immigration policy. Brilliant entrepreneurs, scientists, and academics want to come in legally and are rejected, while thousands of others come in illegally.
Not really. There are plenty of examples of that, but this is an example of someone applying for a special kind of visa that they were obviously not qualified for and then not getting it. I'm sorry for them on a personal level, but at an institutional level, the system worked just fine.
Uh, what? Your parent essentially complained that US immigration, institutionally, favors low quality immigrants over high quality. It's hard to fathom how you don't consider this an example of that.
Re: Today My US Investor Visa Application Was Denied
#30what's stopping you from doing a web(I'm guessing) startup outside of United States?
This is my question as well.
Your website seems to be very web-centric business (according to your user page), what is it that you cannot accomplish regarding this remotely?