The premise is that if you’re a budding entrepreneur with viable investment money on hand, you should be able to freely come to the US as a nonimmigrant to start your business. Hitherto, the only ways to come to the US without having been born here have been through a buffet of non-immigrant visas or being able to secure work in the country. The latter has always been classified as a dual-intent visa that allows you to also apply for permanent residency through employment based green cards. Notice the importance of intent. If you’re a student and you give the guy at the consulate the impression that you’re going to find a job after graduating, there are grounds to reject your non-immigrant visa.

This becomes an important issue to consider when you realize that MOST of the successful companies in the US were started by people who first came to the US on these student or other non-immigrant visas. Statistically, most successful startups are also conceptualized and governed by people in their late 20s or early 30s. Also, quite a few, if not all, entrepreneurs work for a while IN THE USA before they think, ‘Hmmm, I should start a business doing this’.

MISTAKE 1: Emphasis on intent

Now, once you’re in the USA, you complete your education from one of the top schools in the world. Even though you hardly have any American students in your Algorithms class, you are optimistic, and you get that degree. But wait, you get one more just because you love being in school. And here you are, one of the brightest people around, have a potential career, have a strong head on your shoulders, are optimistic, etc. What next? You apply for a job! Yey, right? No. Because…you’re now a potential immigrant, are suddenly a bad guy because you’re trying to reduce wages, and worst of all, you aren’t American. You are in line for a work permit.

MISTAKE 2: Treating international graduates like first time immigrants

But, before you get a work permit, you have to be worthy enough for a company to spend more than $3k on lawyer and application fees for you. On top of that, thanks to the xenophobia and immigration backlash, they have to contend with the fact that the other employees might link your getting hired to their kin losing jobs. I know it’s ass backwards, but bear with me. In the quest to get a work permit, who wins? Half of that $3k figure is actually lawyer costs. In a country where the insurance company makes more than the doctor this doesn’t surprise me one bit. Compare this to Canada, where just like healthcare, you don’t need a middleman to file your paperwork.

MISTAKE 3: Making it hard to actually get a visa

Now you have a visa, a job, and are making some money. You’re being a good non-citizen – paying more taxes than citizens (you can never avail a lot of benefits reserved for citizens), contributing to the society, making kind donations for the needy, obeying the civic laws, etc. Then, you realize that you’re actually good at what you do, and there’s a lot of sense in starting a business. Well, welcome to America! You can start a business but you cannot work for it! We like passive investment, but you cannot do anything more than putting in money. Which means, you’d have to have a full time job, worry about keeping it, all the while as you struggle to start your company and make it profitable. You have a choice – move to Canada or Chile while you’re still young or live the American H1B dream.

MISTAKE 4: Wanting the best but doing nothing to keep them here

So you eschew the idea of starting a new enterprise until you are a legal permanent residence and don’t have to worry about being employed all the time. Well, there’s an app…err I mean paperwork for that. And, if you are a citizen of China or India, you are looking at almost 6-7 years of patiently waiting before getting anything back out of that paperwork and large amounts of attorney fees. Depending on when you file for your permanent residency, you could all but forget about marrying that girl you knew back home, because she could marry you but not come back with you. Splendid.

MISTAKE 5: Making timely legal immigration some sort of a pipe dream

Once you get that ever so elusive green card, you’re fed up, tired, old, and the torture you faced has made you an immigrant hater yourself. Then, there’s the added pressure of hearing about all those successful peers that went home when there was time and made big bucks. So, what do you do with that green card? Well, you use it to help your retired parents spend the rest of their life with you here in America where you nearly got everything you wanted when you wanted.

There was a time when people actually went through all this effort, because frankly, there was no better place to work than in America. Things have changed A LOT since then. There’s a mass exodus of young non-immigrants from the US to other countries. These people came here, got educated, loved working hard, met great people, but they don’t want to toil away for a piece of paper that still wouldn’t release them from the xenophobia that they so wanted to overcome.

So, where does the Founders Visa fit in? Some say it should be an entirely new visa that looks at you as a capable entrepreneur, gives you a few years to prove it, and requires some amount of backing by established investors. If you fail, you leave the country.

Are you fricking serious? I am sure that’s so enticing.

Some argue that it should be an extension of the EB5 permanent residency category. The category that lets you come to the US, no holds barred, for a mere amount of $1,000,000 ($500,000 through a rural investment). That’s really it. Invest that amount of money and you’re guaranteed a happy retirement in the United States of America! All it takes is 2 months of paperwork and lawyer fees. Splendid again.

You know why the Founders Visa proposal sucks?

IT IS STILL A VISA AT THE END OF THE DAY

You are not inviting any talented people to the country by making such an entry conditional on their being successful. Are you serious? Do you ever go out during the day? Do you have a social life? How do you explain the pressure on these entrepreneurs who have to compete with undocumented immigrants (who, by the way have it way way easier)?

How many entrepreneurs would come to the US just to take a risk when Canada would simply look at their education and give them a permanent resident status? Do you think they would leave their families behind?

More importantly – How do you define success?

The Founders Visa suffers from all the mistakes mentioned above. Congratulations, you didn’t provide any solution.

IT IS STILL A VISA

Addendum: I realized later that my post might come across as starting off with the mistakes in the new proposal. That is not true. The main reason I list the problems with the current policies is that I believe they should be addressed before we start baking a second layer of our cake. Also, I believe that if the intent of the visa is to attract people who have never been to the US before, the facts that it is still a temporary permit and that it banks heavily on the beneficiary being successful are also the flaws of the proposal.

If the intent is to keep the bright people from leaving, then the mistakes listed need to be addressed. There’s just too much hard work involved in being successful, and the headache of worrying about a stable US presence just makes the proposal not worth it.

A list of what’s ‘new’ – 3G support, cheaper, built in assisted GPS.

Every other new feature is a software feature that would be provided free of cost to the people who already bought the first version a year ago. I am currently beta testing the new firmware, and it is a step up, definitely.

What amazes me though, is the blind trust some people have for Apple. Steve Jobs compared the browser on the iPhone with browsers on phones that were at least 2 years old. He completely side-stepped the modern browsers on Windows Mobile, or even BlackBerry devices. For the intelligent consumer, it doesn’t mean a thing, but for the average dumb/brainwashed consumer, Jobs’ word is gospel. The Safari browser on the iPhone is NOT at all the fastest mobile browser.

Another example – as is the case with all things Apple, there were rumors floating around just before the keynote about the new model having various features like MMS (which has been a staple feature of all phones since the early 2000′s), video conferencing, higher resolution camera, better Bluetooth support, etc. But, ultimately, nothing of that sort came even close to being announced. People are happy, nonetheless, or rather the fanboys are.

On top of this ludicrousness, ATT thought it would be a good time to bump the rate of the data plan from $20 a month to $30 a month. This makes an entry level plan for the iPhone cost approximately $70 a month before taxes. And I thought that communications was getting cheaper everyday.

I love Apple’s products just because they tend to be minimalist, but I have a major grudge against their false, unethical, inaccurate marketing. I also abhor fanboys who have every possible justification for skipped basic functionality.

That said, I am going to create an interesting app one day for the iPhone

The preparation was pretty easy, and between purchasing the study guide and passing the license exam, I spent about 15 days. The Technician level is supposed to be an easy entry path for anyone interested in being a Ham. On the other hand, the General and Amateur Extra levels require much more intensive training in the fundamentals of radio communications, engineering, and regulations. It is definitely to my advantage that I have a degree in electrical engineering with extensive coursework in radio theory and antenna design.

There are exam sessions organized by volunteer examiners several times during a week, and all it takes is a simple email/phone call to register. The exam session I attended was organized at the Police Station/Courthouse in Wake Forest. I got a perfect score on the exam! The VEs coerced me into taking the exam for the General level license on the spot, even though I wasn’t prepared, but unfortunately, I wasn’t able to qualify for that. Needless to say, I am happy that I am now a “ham”, and look forward to graduating to the next level very soon!

Now that I have my license, I intend to complete the requisite courses mandated by the Department of Homeland Security, and successfully enroll in the ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service) and the RACES (Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service). Other than volunteering, my other interests at this point are DXing (contacting other fellow hams around the globe), antenna design, and digital communications. There are a multitude of clubs and organizations around the globe, and regular events/conventions are organized on a fairly regular basis (hamfests, Field Day, nets), which makes it very easy for beginners to get their feet wet.

If you are interested in becoming a ham, too, please don’t hesitate in sending me an email for further information/guidance!

UPDATE: I just got my license information from FCC. I will now be known as Saurabh Garg, KI4WAH !

Craigslist has been in news lately. And, why wouldn’t it be? With monthly hits of more than a billion users, and Yahoo! trying to buy Facebook, there’s speculation that this “simpler than Google” website would be looking for buyers soon. Founder Craig Newmark has denied any such intentions to “sell out”. I am not going to comment on his reasons for not trying to mint money out of his creation.

Craigslist is indeed phenomenal. It is hardly even “Web 1.0″ in terms of layout and design, much less Web 2.0. Yet, it still is profitable, and brings in a lot of traffic both nationally as well as internationally. One quick glance on this website would tell you exactly how it manages to do this. Craigslist is a haven for anyone looking to buy, sell, barter, find dates, get a job, provide a job, and generally rant about their life. It is like a Usenet frontend, only without the confusion and overflow.

Just yesterday, I placed an ad in the Raleigh Craigslist to sell off my year old vacuum cleaner. Amazingly, I had the money within 2 hours of posting that ad. This is the power of Craigslist. Many people use it to make friends. I, personally, have met a lot of people and groups just by posting and replying to ads. It’s fascinating how much more attention your ad gets if it has a picture attached. I have sold a computer monitor and a TV through Craigslist, and in all the cases a picture really helped me get a lot of replies. Of course, Craigslist has also been the center of a lot of “social experiments” about people’s lifestyles.

One thing I noticed about Newmark’s rebuttal to claims that he was going to sell out was how he pointed out that he doesn’t want to raise money even for philanthropy. According to him, it is very hard to find a good cause to contribute to. I find it sad that even with all this Internet revolution and connectivity, we’re still unable to find valuable outlets for philanthropy. What he said isn’t incorrect. Philanthropy has always been a part of our lives, and sadly there isn’t much on the Internet that helps us share our happiness with others. There are lots of up and coming companies working on this aspect though (including me), and there’ll be lots of competition in this area very soon. Until then, I am surprised that Craig Newmark didn’t think about using his own company to find out good philanthropic causes!