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

blog.ycombinator.com

691–700 of 851 posts

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

#691

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.

> And once Vancouver or any other city starts working for them, Silicon Valley will lose its exclusivity.

I fail to see the problem.

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

#692
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. But it'll do some damage, which will only get worse as time goes on. What about 8 years? 12? If you restrict skilled legal immigration long-term, you're necessarily going to (slowly) drive companies away.

This implies that we don't have enough home-grown talent. We do.

It's not a zero-sum game of open jobs to potential employees.

If you're able to interact with the smartest people in the world - and not just your own country - you end up forming more effective and larger companies. Which in turn create jobs.

If you shut out your country to the rest of the world, the next Google will be founded somewhere else.

And I'll dispute your claim that the US has enough talent. There was a submission on HN recently about the top deep learning papers. Go through it. Count the number of American-born people. Geoff Hinton? Yann LeCun? Russ Salakhutdinov? Demis Hassibis (of Deep Mind)? Virtually everyone on there was born somewhere else. They're not Americans, but they're mostly working for American companies and contributing their talent to YOUR economy.

[0] https://github.com/terryum/awesome-deep-learning-papers/blob...

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

#693
post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flip side of that sentiment is calling fascism on anyone who thinks sanctuary cities are bullshit. The lunacy is bipartisan.

Your US 2 party system is busted to the extreme, and in other G7 countries your Democratic party would barely be considered "left" let alone "far left", so yeah, pretty lunatic. As for sanctuary cities, when your state is sitting on territory that was formerly part of Mexico, its major cities still carrying Spanish names, its labour force overwhelmingly dominated by Latinos, it doesn't seem crazy at all to question t…

Meh. Not really. In parliamentary systems, you might have a lot of parties in the mix, but they caucus and forms blocs. Same happens here, just upstream through primaries. Democrats have centrists and progressives and a fringe of anarcho-socialists. Republicans Ave moderates, conservatives, libertarians, Tea Party, and whatever the Alt Right is.

As for "overwhelmingly", you make it sound like we're living in Mexico but have the indecency of calling it the US. As for the current state of population, LA is around 50% Latino at most. That isn't illegal immigrants. Those aren't people that identify as Mexicans in America. Those are Americans. Some even voted for Trump.

All territory was formerly part of someone else's territory. Borders move and people along with them. I feel no moral burden to accommodate previous inhabitants, nor would I expect any if the table was turned. That said, if states truly moved to nullify federal law based on a tenable legal position, I'd listen. However, they'd have to make such an argument, as opposed to a philosophical one (like yours, which I don't agree with).

As for your "understanding" of the origin of sanctuary cities, you've been reading fake news.

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

#694

Perhaps a startup founder could exploit "ease-of-travel arbitrage" and offer a service: Remote working from several countries that are easy to get to, accept a wide range of passports, and have enormous bandwidth. Canada is a lot more open than the US at this point in time, but it's not all roses for people even to get to Vancouver. What if there were a hub in, say Dubai? And a few other spots around the world? I ima…

Are you aware that Dubai is lacking in various freedoms?

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

#695
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the internet there? Isn't it censored and relatively slow and expensive? VPNs are legally banned (1). Last I checked, FaceTime + WhatsApp audio were completely blocked in Dubai. Skype was blocked when on mobile data (but available on PC-to-PC). 1 - http://gulfnews.com/news/uae/crime/using-vpns-what-uae-resid...

Those restrictions do not apply in the business district, AFAIK. There is a lot of encapsulation that Dubai provides international businesses from their local restrictions.

Don't ever want to work in a place where you can be thrown into jail for months for getting pregnant out of wedlock.

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

#696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree that Toronto is lovely, but 113km is a curious definition for "stone's throw"... Especially given the 401's proclivity for stop-and-go traffic...

You can often make the trip in under an hour. Similar to the trip from Berkeley to SF!

I went to Waterloo for school and used to make the drive to TO regularly - under an hour is a very optimistic estimate that probably relies on some fortuitous celestial alignment.

In any case I also wouldn't describe Berkeley-SF as a "stone's throw" either...

Which is actually a great example - many a person has moved out of SF for Berkeley, because "I'll be around all the time, it's not that far" - only to be rarely seen again.

The "work/live in Loo, hang out in TO" thing is mostly theoretical, though I'm sure you can find a few people who actually do it.

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

#697

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.

> And once Vancouver or any other city starts working for them, Silicon Valley will lose its exclusivity. I fail to see the problem.

[deleted]

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

#698
post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these have more sunny days than Vancouver. :)

Vancouver has a lot more sunshine per year than London.

I've met a Londoner in Seattle (which is about 2 hrs from Vancouver), said he felt "at home" with the weather in Seattle... I'm guessing they're about the same, though I suspect you're right, given the UK's one big island ...

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

#700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious question is will the US government allow one of its most profitable states to leave? Highly doubtful. Great way to start another civil war, though!

I think a red government will let a blue state leave (permanent electoral majority). I don't think the same would be true the other way around, because progressive values are more, shall we say, evangelical than those of the nationalists.

You can't do single-purpose political accounts here. Also, trolling with a username is trolling. We've banned this account.
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