I have to disagree, at least anecdotally. I know several people, whom I'm pretty sure don't have to work if they don't want to. Yet they moved to the US specifically in order to start companies. And even they, rich, educated folk from "good" countries have had ridiculous amounts of trouble getting visas and work permission.

Anecdotally, I know at least several Americans that have moved to Europe, at least one pretty affluent.

But anecdotes are nice, numbers are better. For every wealthy person that would like to get 'in' to the US there must be 50,000 poor ones.

The difference is that for them nobody is going out of their way to create special visa to allow them entrance.

One thing the stats don't show, and I'm quite curious about, are those who are wealthy but seek greater (or even continue to seek) opportunities. The bulk of taxes don't tax wealth - they tax income (and gains on wealth like capital gains, interest and dividends get treated differently depending on where you go). Perversely, the rich have the luxury then to be subsidized for certain parameters because they don't need to pay for what they see as the benefits of living in that given place.

For this reason, you can get some remarkable statements like the year that Warren Buffett said something to the effect that there is something wrong with a system when his secretary gets taxed as a percent more than he does. Of course, we later learned this was somewhat disingenuous given most of his income wasn't personal income at all but dividends (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/tax/article1996735.ec...).

This being said, how is your comment relevant to the startup visa? The idea as I understand it would be to attract those without money but who need it from VC's - and as you say, the US is often the destination of choice for those like that. The point being to attract great entrepreneurs from countries that don't welcome them - at least a number of countries being a case in point: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4095&... - "In one 2005 poll, just 36 percent of French citizens said they supported the free-enterprise system, the only one of 22 countries polled that showed minority support for this cornerstone of global commerce. In Germany, meanwhile, support for socialist ideals is running at all-time highs—47 percent in 2007 versus 36 percent in 1991."

Maybe an option to encourage startups is to offer a tax break for the first 12-24 months, if they create x (5 or 10) jobs. Irrespective of if the founders are US Citizen or Permanent residents.

The problem with this is the potential for massive gaming. The argument of non-startups would be why should they be penalized for having hired people before this period or are considering laying them off and would not otherwise be viable without the tax advantage?

Ideally they would make the tax incentives permanent - ie reduce payroll taxes if the goal is to increase employment, but I think the startup visa is a much more interesting alternative as it seeks to attract talent that traditionally is difficult to define but is so important to how vibrant an economy is. In theory, just the fact these people bring viable ideas that people want to fund should be sufficient irrespective of jobs they create.

There is going to always be some company to game the system somehow. Look at Microsoft & their H1-B visa dependency.

That said, I think tax-breaks for increasing number of employees is a good idea.

Also, an investor can qualify for an EB-5 visa & green card by investing a $500k to $1m in "saving" 10 jobs.

Forgive my ignorance, but can you explain how Microsoft games the system with H1-B's?

re: tax breaks for increasing the number of employees, here's a fairly balanced posting on the subject: http://business.theatlantic.com/2009/10/would_a_payroll_tax_... - of course on a more fundamental level, payroll taxes always has struck me as odd considering essentially it's a tax on companies for hiring folks.

For me, a permanent reduction would be a far greater incentive to hire people because at least for me, I hope that I am hiring someone for more than a year or two which is when presumably the tax breaks would expire.

I am tempted sometimes to start a company in the US just due to it's market and social access to places like silicon valley. But I do not want to become a US citizen since they tax their citizens globally, no matter where they are in the world, no matter where they make their income. If I'm living somewhere that the US does not have a tax treaty with, and making all of my income there, I don't want to give anything I make over 80'000 to the US govt. Hell people give up their US citizenship to just avoid this. But your still on the hook (somehow? It doesn't make sense if you revoked citizenship) for 10 years after that. And there is a wealth tax for giving up the citizenship right after.

I see this as a good opportunity to retain startup oriented students attending US colleges.