I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

To help answer the question, because it's not an irresponsible argument at face value, assuming good faith:

Tech companies generally hire 'talent' not 'labour'. The people they need have specific skills and abilities, which are in short supply.

'Average Joes' are by definition not in the running for these mostly competitive opportunities.

If these companies could just hire average Joes they absolutely would.

That's not always the case - as local workers are sometimes displaced, and that could conceivably be seen an unfair. H1B for Tata etc. does overlap in this area.

By and large, if we move issues of 'culture and identity' aside, the US benefits enormously from immigrants.

Not in all aspects, but mostly.

Elon Musk, Google founders, Jensen at Nvidia, 1/2 involved in Frontier AI are 'born outside of the US'.

Those companies would probably not exist without them.

Maybe another way to think about it that the Bay Area is a 'Special International Economic Zone' hosted by the US, which is where Global HQ of many International tech companies are domiciled.

Apart from their staff, usually well over > 50% of revenues come from abroad as well, making these truly international companies.

The US gets the great benefit of hosting these mostly international organizations.

Were this an issue of regular employment, there's be a stronger case, but this is a more specific thing.

Because the numbers are small enough, there is almost zero downside for US citizens, and the companies that are created end up employing more Americans than they would otherwise. That said - locals can be priced out of these economic centres like the Bay and NYC, and that is arguably unfair.

> Please don't waste community time and space by posting unsubstantive comments.

It's a very genuine question for how an attorney deals with these businesses? There are countless examples of startups breaking the law at mass scale (Uber, etc) and getting away with it. Sorry that asking difficult questions is wasting "community space". Your own profile cites conflict as essential, is asking difficult questions not part of that?

Part of the guidelines you asked me to review is "Assume good faith." Did you assume good faith from my comment?

One of the more recent discussions here was about Medvi, which described many illegal/unethical business practices. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/02/technology/ai-billion-dol...

Other examples include Airbnb building a bot poaching listings from Craigslist, Stripe not developing appropriate internal rules to enable fraud and drug transactions, pretty much all crypto exchanges and KYC, etc.

Obviously, payment processors like Stripe do not spring into existence fully formed with mature controls. My question relates partially to how attorneys in this domain handle the risks associated with undeveloped compliance, compliance failures, as well as business models that are diametrically opposing the law.

There is an area that many startups believe is "grey" where they operate outside of legal norms, whether it's to enable growth, lack of appropriate risk controls, etc.

Here, startups may knowingly, or unknowingly break the law related to immigration in order to further their business. That's what my question relates to.

It's definitely more stressful and challenging traveling back to the U.S. using an AP but for the most part it's still fine and we are advising clients to continue to travel on their APs but to consult with us/an immigration attorney before their first international trip so they understand what questions they might be asked by CBP when they return.

You can hire whoever you want - in their nation of residence.

But domiciling them in your own country implies something else entirely, and it involves social considerations far beyond the capricious nature the contract you've offered them.

In which case, those social and civic considerations become paramount.

It has increased but the risk is still very low (assuming the AP holder has no issues, such as a criminal record).