The Startup Visa by Tahmina Watson

Author:Tahmina Watson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tahmina Watson
Published: 2015-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Legislative History

While the story of the entrepreneurial immigrant is not new, it wasn’t until 2010 that lawmakers finally introduced a bill in Congress to create a path specifically designed for them to obtain legal permanent status here. Since then, lawmakers have introduced several major bills authorizing a Startup Visa program. None has passed.

Former Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Richard Lugar, R-Ind., introduced the first one, S. 3029, with the aim of driving job creation and increasing America’s global competitiveness. It would allow immigrant entrepreneurs to receive a two-year conditional immigrant visa if they could show that a qualified American investor was willing to dedicate a significant sum – a minimum of $250,000 – to the immigrant’s startup venture and create a certain number of jobs. It would also create a new visa category for immigrant entrepreneurs, called EB-6, borrowing from the current EB-5 visa category, which permits foreign nationals who invest at least $1 million in a U.S. project, thereby creating 10 jobs, to obtain a green card. Although more than 160 venture capitalists from across the country endorsed the senators’ proposal, the legislation never made it out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, where it died at the end of the 111 th Congress.

Another attempt to enact the Startup legislation came the following year, when Senators Lugar and Kerry, along with Sen. Mark Udall, a Democrat from Colorado, reintroduced the legislation. The Startup Visa Act of 2011, S. 565, was an expanded version of the original. In addition to many key provisions spelled out in the original bill, this new version sought to broaden the potential pool of eligible immigrants to include those already here on H-1B visas, as well as entrepreneurs living outside the U.S. It also established new visa options for foreign entrepreneurs already living in the U.S. on E-2 visas as well as for entrepreneurs living abroad, setting forth conditions for each that included investment in their company, revenue generation and job creation. Unfortunately, this bill, too, never made it out of the Judiciary Committee.

In May 2012, Startup Act 2.0 was introduced by Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan. The legislation, S. 3217, called for a STEM visa to allow graduates in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math, to stay in the U.S. and start their own companies. The bill also proposed an entrepreneur visa and elimination of per-country caps for employment-based immigration. It died shortly after introduction.

In February the following year, Moran again, along with Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., Chris Coons, D-Del., and Roy Blunt, R-Mo., introduced the Startup Act 3.0, S. 310, to create both an entrepreneur and a STEM visa. The Entrepreneur Visa would allow entrepreneurs to enter and stay in the country, launch businesses and create jobs. The STEM Visa would allow U.S.-educated foreign students, with an advance degree in any STEM field, to receive a green card. But this bill also stalled. It is this same bill that was reintroduced in January 2015 as The Startup Act, S.181.

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