> And I know many startups that are eager to get visas for people they want to hire, and would have zero interest in having employees that felt trapped at their

> And I know many startups that are eager to get visas for people they want to hire, and would have zero interest in having employees that felt trapped at their company. The problem is not that an employee would feel trapped but the nature of the visa means that there is also potential for exploitation of an employee. Working in an at-will employment state on an H1B is always inherently risky: If a green card holder or a US citizen gets fired, there is no big deal: You spend a week or two and find a job in this market. A H1B holder immediately goes out of status once they get terminated or laid off (or hell if the startup goes under.). I see tons of VCs/startup founders talking about making the visas easier for people they want to hire but there is little or no talk about strengthening the rights of the employees they want to hire. (I realize that they are guest workers and have little or no rights in this nation but still..) I remember graduating out of school and finding it surprising that most if not all of the foreign-born students who graduated along with me flocking to large companies. Now that I have spent a year in industry, working in startups, I don't actually find that that surprising: I have seen enough people who worked at startups getting fired (sometimes due to incompetence and other times because team fit didn't exist and the fast moving nature of a startup means that firing is sometimes a better decision than not) and having to scramble around trying to find a way not to uproot their lives and family and move suddenly back home.