Making Immigration Entrepreneurial

Abstract

The H1-B visa program is one of two significant immigration programs for skilled labor, and currently imports tens of thousands of skilled foreign workers to the United States each year. Today, companies like Amazon, Meta, and Tesla dominate the H1-B program, taking up hundreds of spots respectively each year. This state of affairs allows for technology companies to fill their ranks with skilled labor where there are shortages of such workers in the United States. However, it does little to help new entrepreneurial ventures acquire much needed talent, since startups are mostly unable to compete with larger technology companies in utilizing the H1-B visa program’s lottery process. This lottery process favors employers who can pay to submit multiple visa applications per applicant in an effort to bolster the applicant’s odds of being selected for one of a limited number of H1-B visas. In this sense, the current H1-B framework is anti-entrepreneurship, favoring temporary workers for large enterprises over workers who will work quickly to create significant economic value through new business startups.

This essay argues that the United States is due for an entrepreneurship specific visa for startup founders and early-stage startup employees. It builds on the work of previous scholars who have advocated for founder-specific and investor-specific visas. However, this essay goes further, by advocating for visas and a path to permanent residence specific to early-stage startup employees who are granted meaningful equity in the new venture for which they work. A program like the one proposed here would allow the United States to maintain its lead as the preeminent destination for entrepreneurs globally, and further, would provide a clear pathway for permanently recruiting highly skilled workers with an orientation towards innovation. Given that new business ventures are the main driver of economic growth in the United States, this proposal provides for a program that would drive more economic growth than the current H1-B program.

Keywords: entrepreneurship, immigration, H1-B visa, optional practical training, tech companies, startups, law, immigration law, economic growth, workforce issues, United States, entrepreneurship law