Startup Visa

The Startup Visa is a temporary conditional residence permit in different countries. It aims at introducing a visa category for entrepreneurs raising outside funding and converts to a permanent residency visa if certain conditions are met.

In the U.S., the startup visa was a proposed amendment to the U.S. immigration law to create a visa category for foreign entrepreneurs who have raised capital from qualified American investors (Startup Visa Act of 2011, as introduced on March 14, 2011). The Startup Visa Act had bi-partisan support but was not passed into law.

Foreign entrepreneurs who find themselves wanting to start a company in the United States are faced with no or limited visa options. The few visas offering residency and thus a path to citizenship applicable to entrepreneurs are visa categories such as the EB-1 visa, or the EB-5 visa, which were not designed for entrepreneurs in particular, and can only apply to an extremely limited number of entrepreneurs. Employment-based visas such as the EB-2 visa are not viable options for entrepreneurs and can be denied on the ground of the applicant owning significant stake in the sponsor company.

The new legislation provides visas to the following groups under certain conditions:

The Startup Visa does not allocate any new visa numbers but draws from unused numbers out of the EB-5 visa category (investor green card) which is limited to 9,940 visas, of which only 4,191 visas were used in fiscal year 2009.

The office of Senator Lugar stressed the following statement "The creation of new visas is not authorized in this bill."

In perspective, the U.S. admitted 1.13 million new legal permanent residents in the US in 2009, of which, only 12.7% were admitted through a selective process or "Employment-based" categories.

Introduced in Senate on February 24, 2010, the Startup Visa Act of 2010 was left to expire in the Judiciary Committee at the end of the 111th Congress with no further legislative action having been taken on it.

In a second attempt, the Startup Visa Act of 2011 was introduced in Senate on March 14, 2011. However, it was again left to expire in the Judiciary Committee at the end of the 112th Congress and not enacted.

The Startup Visa Act of 2013 has been introduced in the Senate on January 30, 2013 and is currently awaiting Committee review. It has to undergo a review with the respectives and the Immigration subcommittees of the Senate and the House. According to Govtrack.us, "The majority of bills and resolutions never make it out of committee".

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Wikipedia