No Deadline for H1B Visa Applicants: USCIS

The US citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) have started accepting the H1B Visa applications for the next fiscal year from Wednesday. An overall 65,000 applications are offered excluding 20,000 H1B visas for applicants of US masters’ or higher degree. In 2009, due to the downturn the filed applications were fewer and to meet the limit of 65,000 wanted to wait until December. Due to the reinforcement of outsourcing business, the limit is to be infringed in advance this year.
USCIS has not insisted any deadline for accepting H1B applications in 2010. A release from USCIS remarked: “Cases will be considered accepted on the date that it takes possession of a properly filed petition with the correct fee; not the date that the petition is postmarked.”

Source: Daily News 365

Let’s Give Visas to Startup Founders

Bring up the topic of economic stimulus and job creation, and you won’t hear much about immigration. If the topic does arise, it’s usually because somebody believes foreigners are taking U.S. jobs.

It’s time to bring the immigration question squarely into the debate over jobs. A change to immigration policy could help create jobs and rev up economic growth. It’s a change that wouldn’t be hard to bring about. I’m talking about the establishment of a Startup Founders Visa program.

The program would make it easier for those with great ideas and the desire to start a company to live and work in the U.S. The idea is simple, yet powerful. By letting in company founders, the U.S. would bring in risk-takers who want to create jobs and potentially build the next Google (GOOG), Cisco Systems (CSCO), or Microsoft (MSFT).

At the same time, a founder visa program could stem the tide of talented, tech-savvy foreigners who are leaving the U.S. to seek fortunes in their home countries, primarily China and India. Even foes of flexible immigration policies who rail against both skilled and unskilled immigrants may have a hard time finding fault with granting visas to startup founders.

REQUIRED: EARLY INVESTOR BACKING

This type of program has been championed by a long list of technology notables and entrepreneurship gurus, including venture capitalists Brad Feld, a managing director at Mobius Venture Capital, Paul Graham, a partner at early-stage venture firm Y Combinator, and technology startup experts Eric Ries and Dave McClure. This idea was originally conceived last year by Robert Litan, the Kaufmann Foundation’s vice-president of research.

Here’s how it would work. Suppose a talented engineer who is not a U.S. citizen has a great idea for a new type of search engine and wants to start a company. This entrepreneur wants to start that company in the U.S., where venture capital markets are the most mature, intellectual property laws are strong, and the talent level is high. It turns out that the would-be founder’s search engine idea is actually very good. So a qualified U.S. investor decides to put real money—say, $250,000 to $500,000—into the startup. That investor could nominate the potential founder for a Founders Visa while also making a formal commitment to fund his or her company.

The idea and the founder’s résumé would then need to pass muster with a government or industry-appointed board of venture capitalists, financiers, or technology experts. After passing, the founder would be granted a permanent resident visa.

To open up visa slots, Ries, Feld and others propose altering an existing visa known as the EB-5, now for immigrant investors. Created by the Immigration Act of 1990, the EB-5 lets foreign nationals who invest at least $1 million in the U.S., and thereby create 10 jobs, obtain a green card visa. In areas where unemployment is high, foreign nationals need only invest $500,000 to obtain residency. By adding a Founders Visa provision such as that I have outlined to the EB-5 visa, we could avoid having to create a new class of visas and any political hassles this might entail.

NEWT GINGRICH LIKES THE IDEA

Richard Herman, a Cleveland-based immigration attorney and co-author of the upcoming bookImmigrant, Inc.—Why Immigrant Entrepreneurs Are Driving the New Economy (and how they will save the American worker), says that allowing thousands of founders to get special immigration status could spur sufficient economic activity and innovation to realize billions of dollars in real economic gains for this country within a short time span. We’re talking years, not decades.

How palatable would such a program be politically? U.S. Representative Jared Polis (D-Colo.), himself a former entrepreneur, is developing legislation to make it easier for foreign founders of investor-backed startups to secure visas to remain in the U.S. On the other end of the political spectrum, even Newt Gingrich, the Republican former Speaker of the House, has bloggedabout the need to make the country “more accessible to skilled immigrants.” He wrote this after witnessing “the dynamic entrepreneurial and high-tech business culture in Tokyo, Beijing, and Seoul”—countries with which we are competing for top talent. Representatives of both ends of the political spectrum can agree on this issue.

As things stand, we’re losing the battle to retain the immigrants who fueled the recent tech boom. We’re experiencing the first brain drain in American history.Other countries in Europe and South America are realizing the potential of attracting skilled immigrants and are putting together programs to snap them up. The startups needed to boost our economy are being created in Shanghai and Bangalore. That’s great for those countries, but we need job creation in Silicon Valley in California and Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. That means warmly welcoming to America as many founders as we can.

Wadhwa is senior research associate at the Labor & Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and executive in residence at Duke University. He is an entrepreneur who founded two technology companies. His research can be found at www.globalizationresearch.com. Follow him on Twitter“@vwadhwa”.

[Source: Businessweek]

Boston businessman selling his restaurant, and a green card visa

An Irish American businessman outside Boston is offering his farm and restaurant business for sale through Realtors in Ireland — with the added attraction that a coveted green card visa is included.

Steve Thompson is offering Tully Mill, a restaurant, Irish pub and pig farm on 8.3 acres some 80 miles from Boston to any Irish person — who can then apply for a greencard through an “investor visa.”

Thompson, who is a chiropractor, decided to offer the land/visa deal to an Irish business person after talking it over with friends in Killarney. He has had to step away from the business for health reasons.

To qualify for the investor business visa, the person would have to employ ten people in America. Thompson says the business employed thirty people when he ran it. The EB-5 visa is for immigrant investors. The visa can be processed in a year or so, and the businessman’s wife and family under 21 are all eligible for green card visas also.

Thompson says all the restaurant furnishings, appliances and equipment are included in the sale. “All new owners need to do is buy groceries,” he told The Irish Times.

As well as the business, there’s a restored 250-year-old Cape Cod-style house, landscaped lawns and a waterfall. Irish real estate companies believe there will be many queries, especially given the poor state of the Irish economy and the weak dollar.

[source: Irish Central]

Green card visa deal for rich investors [source: Independent]

A bill signed into law last week by US President Barack Obama will allow wealthy Irish people to get green cards to live in the United States in second homes provided they invest in projects that will provide 10 jobs in a high unemployment area.

The little-known programme, known as EB-5 regional centre programme, is a highly beneficial permanent residence option for the wealthy individual, according to Ron Klasko, who is chairman of the EB-5 committee of the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association.

The programme requires an investment of at least $500,000 (€336,000) in a high unemployment or rural area in a commercial enterprise that will employ 10 full-time US workers. The investor has to be able to document that the funds are legal, but does not have to be involved in day-to-day management.

Under the law, the permanent home obtained by the Irish investor is conditional for two years and can be made permanent upon satisfying the US Customs and Immigration Service at the end of the two years that the investment proceeds have not been withdrawn, and that the jobs have been created.

“What are the chances of a wealthy Irish national being able to spend his retirement years in the US? Surprisingly the chances may be very good using a vehicle entitled Regional Centre EB-5,” Mr Klasko’s website says.

“Although many people, especially from Asia, have found the $500,000 price tag to be a small price to pay for the US green card visa, for the ability to retire in the US and for the ability to have their children educated in the US, the programme has received a lot less publicity in Ireland.”

His company, Klasko, Rulon, Stock and Seltzer, with offices in New York and Philadelphia specialising in immigration law, said the visa programme allows the Irish retiree to work or not work as he pleases, to live anywhere he wants to in the US, to travel in and out of the country as frequently as he wishes, and to get green card visa for his spouse and unmarried children under the age of 21.

He must invest a specified amount of money, $500,000 to $1m, in a US government-approved regional centre and the investment must be for a period of at least five years.

Read the full story at Independent