US start-up visas to attract best IT entrepreneurs

Nicola Brittain, Computing, Monday 4 January 2010 at 16:48:00

Visas aim to attract best IT entrepreneurs for the UK and elsewhere to offset
competition from China and India

A proposal that will allow innovative entrepreneurs from the UK and elsewhere
to set up a business in the US will be debated in Congress this week.

The proposal was made by congressman and IT entrepreneur Jared Polis with the
aim of clawing back ground in technology innovation currently being lost to
India and China. It is part of a wider proposed overhaul to the immigration
system.

The issue would potentially swell the ranks of Silicon Valley, where even
now, half the tech company founders are immigrants.

Krill Makharinsky, co founder of YouNoodle, a company that monitors the
start-up sector, said: "There are similar programmes in Canada, the UK and
Australia, and all these countries are vying for the top entrepreneurs. US
citizens make up just 10-20 per cent of the world's talent. To only consider
them would be extremely short sighted."

YouNoodle has also released estimated figures showing that if 10,000 start up
visas were made available, over 3,000 additional new innovative companies would
set up in the US each year, generating more than 10,000 jobs per annum.

Full story at http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/news/2255565/start-visas