What do Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have in common? Besides that, they are all multi-billionaires, that is?
Well, the one other common factor between these three powerhouses, is that they all support immigrants gaining work permits to commence with their start-up businesses.
The main and the most obvious reason to most is, that these self-starters agree with foreigners infiltrating American soils, because these outlanders have been responsible for 51% of the US Billion-Dollar Startup companies.
America is all about making money and while that might sound very superficial, it is 100% true. The US is one of the biggest producers of Billion-Dollar start-up companies and they have mostly immigrants to thank for this.
Think of Uber, the most successful self-starting company in the Dollar world. Whilst Travis Kalanick, one of the co-founders, is an American citizen, his parent's routes come from Czech and Austria. The latest valuation of Uber stands at a whopping $51 billion!
Palantir is another company that has a co-founder with foreign routes. Alexander Karp, again, whilst born in America, has a deep German background. Palantir is grossing $20 billion at the moment on the Billion Dollar Start-up Club and growing leaps and bounds as we speak.
Both these tycoons started off with an idea and brainpower. It is not to say that there are not full-blooded Americans in the population that can't start-up a company just as successfully, that could have the potential to join the Billion Dollar Start-up Club. We are just saying that it makes sense to allow foreigners their chance at it too, without making it so difficult.
And by difficult, we mean damn difficult. It took one immigrant, Jyoti Bansal, 7 years to obtain his green card, which enabled him to start up his software company. 7 years of wasted revenue and potential profit to the American community. AppDynamics Inc. is already valued at $1.9 billion and on the up and up at a fast pace. Imagine if Jyoti had been given his go ahead sooner? His dynamic company could be closer to the $20 billion mark by now and in turn assisting America with its flayling employment problem.
On that note, the amount of jobs created by these Start-up companies is huge. Analysts have calculated that over the next 10 years, these businesses could create up to 3.2 million jobs. And we all know that raising the unemployment lid is vital in America. In fact, all over the world!
Hence, why the likes of Bill Gates are pushing the pencil when it comes to alleviating the strict rules on immigrants securing a working visa?
The biggest issue is that visa applications have a cap and currently that cap is 85,000 per annum. Another aspect, which makes this cap cumbersome and unrealistic, is that the first 65,000 are for foreigners applying for the first time and the balance for foreign students finishing universities in America. This does not leave much room, especially when we are looking at the current stats and info, which show that America consists of over $40 million foreign-born occupants.
Many an immigrant has tried to start up a business, obtain funding and then hit a wall because they cannot confirm with the funding company when they will obtain their US Citizenship. Loads of dollars are poured into venture capital deals every year, but when it is clear that the company won't be able to operate and produce a profit in the near future, investors get nervous.
A big industry that will benefit from engaging and employing foreigners is the tech market. The tech industry forms the biggest part of America's total revenue and many foreign-born citizens have the ability to fit into and benefit this industry.
The recent Bill, which addresses these issues, is the EB-JOBS Act of 2015, and while it has a bright future, it is standing still at the moment. A potential flaw in this act is that it has restrictions for foreigners, in that, if they do not abide by certain job-creation and financial requirements, they may have their green cards withdrawn.
So, either way, our alien counterparts, whether they obtain a green card or struggle for years to obtain a green card, are going to, potentially, hit a snag if they cannot conform to these strict rules held by the EB-JOBS Act.
Interestingly enough, most of the Billion Dollar Start-up candidates hail from India. Think Shopclues.com which, surprisingly, sells mostly small cost effective items like in the home wares, audio, fashion and automotive categories, to mention a few.
The rest are spread over the U.K., Canada, a few in Israel, Germany, and then a real small handful reigning from France and Ireland.
At the end of the day, given all the info, it makes sense to lift the heavy regulations on foreign immigrants and visas. Financially it is the most prudent move that America could make. The numbers speak for themselves. Now let their actions shout out loud too.