Immigrant entrepreneur arrested to meet quotas • Hacker News Board

Re: Immigrant entrepreneur arrested to meet quotas

#101

Post by jbooth » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 3:02 PM UTC

Duff wrote: post #66

maratd wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is going to dispute that the immigration laws in the US are draconian. They're a patchwork sown together by various special interests and make very little sense. However, in the past, they were rarely enforced. Only in instances where someone committed a felony or something of that nature. Over the last decade and especially during the Obama administration, ICE stepped up enforcement. If I had to guess, I'd sa…

It's "get tough" politics. Unions donate billions to Democrats, and they are unhappy with immigration in many industries. (ie. Meat packing, whose union membership has declined dramatically as a result of companies being allowed to exploit undocumented labor.) On the other side, you have conservatives, who are always up in arms about the immigration "crisis". These folks are balanced by the business-focused republica…

Plenty of blame for both sides here, I've heard a whole bunch of immigrant bashing at, well... every Republican event in the last 5 years. Way more than Obama typically does.

My read on it was Obama stepped up enforcement for political cover when he gets accused of things like that by the Republicans, which is still plenty of stupid and weak on his part. Especially since they'll never agree to actually do comprehensive immigration reform if it would be perceived as a victory for Obama.

Re: Immigrant entrepreneur arrested to meet quotas

#102

Post by gnaritas » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 3:05 PM UTC

yeahsure wrote: post #94

eis wrote: post #7

As a kid I always wanted to go to the USA, maybe even live there. So many things to see, the business opportunities and the propagated freedom were very attractive. During the last decade though, the USA have done a fantastic job of eradicating every bit of what was left of this dream. Nowerdays all you hear from them is how Hollywood is destroying little guys' lifes for downloading a bunch of songs, exporting those…

Same here. When I was a kid I pictured myself living "the american dream" when I grew up, maybe move to the States when I became a successful entrepreneur (haven't made it yet!). A few years ago I visited the USA for the first time -and have a been there a few times since- and didn't like what I saw. I like Americans, and I like a lot of things about the US, but wouldn't live there at all. I think the problem was wha…

Could you expand on that last sentence, as an American I find it very interesting?

Re: Immigrant entrepreneur arrested to meet quotas

#103

Post by gnaritas » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 3:09 PM UTC

shin_lao wrote: post #65

rdtsc wrote: post #19

An interesting factoid. There is no legal way for anyone to just come to US and make it their home country. Say someone from Africa or South America. They can't simply save enough money, get on a plane, land at JFK and then after 10 years or whatever time become citizens. They would have to be persecuted in a terrible way before being granted asylum, have to marry a US citizen, find a company that would hire them. I…

If you invest at least $ 1,000,000 in a company, you can get a visa. This gets down to $ 500,000 for some areas. The investment must create or maintain at least 10 jobs. It's the EB-5 visa.

In other word, as usual, there are special privileges for the rich; go figure.

Re: Immigrant entrepreneur arrested to meet quotas

#104

Post by jisaacstone » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 3:12 PM UTC

compay wrote: post #32

I'm American. My wife is Argentine. We live in Argentina in large part because when we wanted to marry in 2006, we couldn't get her a permanent visa to live in the USA. Her fiancee visa was in fact quickly approved, pending an interview at the US consulate in Buenos Aires. We waited and waited, called, had our lawyers call, and the response was always "when the consulate is ready to make an appointment, they will cal…

Took me more than a year and a letter from my congressmen to get a fiancée visa for my wife.

- Even when we finally got an interview the visa was rejected at first because I was living there, with her, instead of back in the USA, alone. They said I had not maintained 'domicile' in the USA and therefore did not intend to return home.

- When we finally received the visa it listed my father as the sponsor instead of me. We had to get a new one.

- Somewhere on the USCIS website it actually stated that applicants were 'guilty until proven innocent'

- In the waiting room, waiting for the final, correct visa there were a group of Americans waiting to adopt. They were given a nice instruction session on what to do, how to fill out the forms, how to deal with the Chinese adoption policies. I, however, felt I had been actively refused help at every turn in a deliberately opaque bureaucracy.

Re: Immigrant entrepreneur arrested to meet quotas

#105

Post by ebaysucks » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 3:15 PM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #46

huhtenberg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no legal way for anyone to just come to US and make it their home country. Depends on what you exactly mean by home country , but there is an investor's visa - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-2_visa

Home country -- on track to be a citizen. And even E-2 is not just anyone -- it is for rich people. Even the minimum amount quoted $50,000 is considered enormous by most of almost 7 billion people living in the world.

$50K is peanuts for a business that is growing. It's the cost of employing an engineer for 4 months.

Honestly if a business isn't planning on investing $50K, why would the US want it?

Start your internet business outside the US, than apply for E-2 telling you want to move your business to Silicon Valley.

Also hire an immigration lawyer. You are hiring engineers to hack code, you hire lawyers to hack the law.

I'm a European and I intent to do exactly this.

Re: Immigrant entrepreneur arrested to meet quotas

#106

Post by Rariel » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 3:16 PM UTC

I know this is an unpopular opinion but, having worked for the government and as an attorney I think it is always sad when families are deported but it is not outrageous. The laws are the laws and they apply equally to (almost) everybody. When people over stay their visas they have broken the law, there is no getting around that and no amount of hard work, tax paying or community involvement can change that. People are arrested and jailed everyday under inequitable laws (crack/cocaine sentencing discrepancy comes to mind) but the way to fix it isn't to get caught up under that law and complain about it.

It's unfortunate that this man will have to relocate but I feel more sympathy for his son than him.

Re: Immigrant entrepreneur arrested to meet quotas

#107

Post by rbanffy » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 3:17 PM UTC

gnaritas wrote: post #103

shin_lao wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you invest at least $ 1,000,000 in a company, you can get a visa. This gets down to $ 500,000 for some areas. The investment must create or maintain at least 10 jobs. It's the EB-5 visa.

In other word, as usual, there are special privileges for the rich; go figure.

I would prefer to read that as privileges for those who create jobs. It's not enough to be rich.

Re: Immigrant entrepreneur arrested to meet quotas

#108

Post by mdda » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 3:20 PM UTC

huhtenberg wrote: post #44

rdtsc wrote: post #19

An interesting factoid. There is no legal way for anyone to just come to US and make it their home country. Say someone from Africa or South America. They can't simply save enough money, get on a plane, land at JFK and then after 10 years or whatever time become citizens. They would have to be persecuted in a terrible way before being granted asylum, have to marry a US citizen, find a company that would hire them. I…

> There is no legal way for anyone to just come to US and make it their home country. Depends on what you exactly mean by home country , but there is an investor's visa - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-2_visa

The E-2 also involves a catch-22 : To show that you're serious about building a business, they require you to show that you have (for instance) a commercial rental lined up. Other things (such as potential employees, letters of intent, bank accounts, LLC incorporation and other strong indications that the business will be viable) are also important.

However, prior to getting the visa, you can't do business in the USA : So it's pretty tough to get all this done and stay strictly within the law (a B-2 visa should be for a business outside the States, for instance).

What's more, when it comes to renew the E-2, you are forced to have an interview (after submitting a whole lot of documentation) in the Embassy in your home nation : And the Embassies won't give any firm guidelines about the visa turn-around period, so that you're left in limbo (away from the US) until the magic envelope with your visa'd Passport inside drops through the letterbox.

FWIW, once at the Embassy, the official there was pretty understanding of the hustle required of an entrepreneur, and was pretty friendly once they saw that the reality matched the intent of the visa. The documentation exists mainly for rejection purposes, IMHO.

Re: Immigrant entrepreneur arrested to meet quotas

#109

Post by ebaysucks » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 3:23 PM UTC

People here arguing that the US should accept more immigrants from all over the world because "the US has been built on immigrants" need to get their facts straight:

The "National Origins Formula" was only abolished in 1965. Before 1965, US immigrants were 90+% white.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Origins_Formula [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act...

This is fact, not opinion.

I'm not arguing a certain side here, but want to point out that those who say "the US has been built on immigrants" might be nostalgic to a past that never existed.

Re: Immigrant entrepreneur arrested to meet quotas

#110

Post by zzaz » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 3:23 PM UTC

Another funny thing about US immigration law is, that if you are an international student in the USA (on an F1 visa) you are entitled to work only for the university that has issued you this visa. For everything else, you have to use your OPT (Optional Practical Training), which is a pool of twelve months, that you can use to work for somebody else, while holding an F1. I will not dig into details such as the fact that it costs about $400, and it takes ~ 2 months to apply and be allowed to use a chunk of your OPT.

If you are an international student and not on OPT, you cannot legally work full time/part time/do an internship with the startup your friend just launched (or any other company, on this note). You may want to risk spending your months, or doing some other jazz, and then try to figure things out, but as we can see from the case at hand these maneuvers do not work out well for everybody.

As for sponsorship, from the employer's perspective, the whole visa sponsorship application process costs about $10k, which is not little money for a small company.