U.S. Immigration Policy Frustrates Startups!

Fred Wilson's post a week or so ago about the problems that one of his portfolio companies has getting a U.S. visa for one of the founders rings a big bell. Here's how he phrased it - "I started my day in a board meeting with one of our companies that was started in Europe. It turns out one of the founders of that company, one that is growing and hiring in the US, cannot get back into the States right now because of a Visa issue."

I've been working with a variety of startups out of the Plug and Play TechCenter for most of this year and I guess that some 40% of the new companies coming there originated outside the U.S.. These are businesses founded by young entrepreneurs who know that they need to relocate here to tap into the Valley ecosystem of funding, talent, prospective customers, partners and access the U.S. market. Despite efforts by many governments in Europe and Asia to develop their own Silicon Valleys there is still no real substitute for being here.

This trend represents an influx of new ideas, perspectives and talents that will be part of the next evolution of the Valley - and its a wonderful thing! And guess what? These entrepreneurs create jobs here. They don't take jobs away from this community - they add to them. Yet our asinine immigration policy makes these people endure constant returns to their home countries for weeks or months on end in order to renew visas, be interviewed at the U.S. embassy, etc etc. What a waste of time, money and opportunity!

The founders of two startups I'm working with - Martin Tantow of 3scale out of Barcelona and Alfonso De La Nuez from UserZoom out of Madrid - are both back in Europe now for extended period dealing with such visa challenges. They will get them of course, but their efforts to hire people, get funding and develop their businesses here stall each time they are gone. Which helps no-one.

There is, fortunately, a grass-roots effort going on to solve this, orchestrated among others by some folks at StartupVisa.com and supported by many with Valley connections. Basically they propose to create a Founder's Visa that will take care of all this. Great idea, definitely overdue. You can contribute to StartupVisa's efforts on their site.