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Are you sure start-ups cannot afford H1-B? It might be a few thousand in lawyer fees, but that might be well worth it, especially if a few key founders need H1-
by miloshh 18y ago
Are you sure start-ups cannot afford H1-B? It might be a few thousand in lawyer fees, but that might be well worth it, especially if a few key founders need H1-B. Since more than 50% start-ups had some immigrant founders, I'm assuming that a large part of them had H1-B rather than some other visa or green card.
- goodgoblin 18y agoI guess it depends on how early stage the start up is. Once you get some funding, sure, I guess you could spend it on lawyer fees, though there are likely many other places you'd be taking it away from. Pre-funding though, or at the founder level, H1-B co-founders need a legal structure to transfer their visa to, or they can apply for a 2nd H1-B visa, but both of those options require a ton of redtape and hold an element of risk to their visa status.
- miloshh 18y agoYes, that is true, in the early stage (before the start-up looks like a respectable company from the outside), it's more complicated. Ideally, you would use a different kind of visa, e.g. F-1 OPT if you have a degree from a US school, or TN if you're Canadian/Mexican. But I agree, the system is screwed up, and making it much harder for non-American founders than it should be. Let's hope Obama administration improves something...