Okay, lesson one here. There is a huge difference between legislation and executive action. As a community, we will still need immigration reform legislation s

Okay, lesson one here. There is a huge difference between legislation and executive action. As a community, we will still need immigration reform legislation should the White House agree to push this change through at the regulatory level. Legislation is the only way we get a viable, sustainable solution. And the proposal in the comprehensive immigration bill was the best policy proposal yet, with their non-immigrant X visa and immigrant (green card) EB-6. But to get this small, incremental step done through executive action doesn't involve legislators (except in the negative, aka the effort saw YC going around the Hill asking folks to not link any hypothetical change in this space to the much more politically controversial changes coming about deportations). So while there is a large change Congress continues to do nothing on startup visa or larger immigration reform for the next several years, it won't be because a potential win here will give legislators an out. Finally, yes, the whole point of startup visa is to avoid the increasingly contentious debate over H-1Bs and foreign employees. Founders are small in number but very clearly hire Americans and directly drive economic growth. Politically, it's a no-lose proposition. So it was a feature, not a bug, that this push focused on founders rather than employees, was small and incremental, and was executive focused rather than legislative.