"Some of the speculation that has come out is that, yes, it was a foreign national and, speculating here, that it was potentially a person on a student visa," King said to the National Review's Robert Costa. "If that's the case, then we need to take a look at the big picture."

But their student visas expire soon, both before summer, and because of the restrictive U.S. visa system, they may have to move their company to India or another country. "We love it here," said Bajpayee, a cheerful 27-year-old in an argyle sweater and jeans. "But there are so many hoops you have to jump through. And you risk getting deported while you are creating jobs."

Countries from Canada to Germany to Australia to Singapore are enthusiastically courting foreign entrepreneurs with relatively easy visas. Some offer cash.

China has given bonuses of up to $150,000 to thousands of highly skilled expatriates who have come home to work or start businesses. Chile is luring top talent with $40,000 in capital, free office space and a quick visa through its "Start-up Chile" program.

"It's a stupid idea," said Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports tighter immigration controls. "What is an entrepreneur? Businesses come and go."

Capita, which won a £40m UKBA contract to trace 174,000 migrants living illegally in the country from September, has been sending text messages and emails to them telling they are required to leave Britain. But immigration lawyers say those who have received Capita's texts in recent weeks include a woman with a valid British passport and a man with a valid visa who had invested £1m in a UK-based business.

Alison Harvey, of the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association, said it had asked for the messages not to be sent over the holiday period: "We were concerned at reports of people who had valid leave to be in the UK receiving the texts and that, over the holiday period, it would be difficult for them to get in touch with their lawyer and they would be anxious and distressed with no possibility of reassurance. Our request was declined."

UKBA admitted the problem was with the accuracy of its records: "We advise anyone contacted in error to contact us so records can be updated. Where our records show that people are here illegally, it is vital we are able to contact them as we are determined that they should return home. This is the first time a government has taken proactive steps to deal with this pool of cases, some of which date back to December 2008."

"The ministry overlooked its own due diligence process, which showed ALS was simply too small to shoulder a contract of this value. The ministry also took no account of the resolve of many experienced interpreters not to work for this company. Against a target of 98%, ALS supplied an interpreter in only 58% of hearings in February 2012.

"This unacceptably poor performance led to courtroom chaos," the report said. It forced court staff to interrupt their core duties to find interpreters at short notice and triggered a steep rise in the number of abandoned trials … ALS could not even guarantee that interpreters had undergone mandatory criminal records checks."

"We are concerned about the language and the atmosphere that is being created, not least because it plays very, very badly internationally," Dandridge said. "Whatever the intentions of the politicians are … every time these sorts of comments are made by the home secretary or others it does have a potentially very damaging impact internationally."

"What universities are reporting to us [is that] they are seeing significant drops, particularly from India, from Pakistan and now from China and Saudi Arabia. These are countries that send large numbers and also they are important countries in terms of international engagement and industry engagement, so we want to be promoting and fostering relations with them, not erecting barriers."

Of course, with unemployment here above eight per cent, too little immigration may not seem like a bad thing: surely we need more jobs, not more workers? But this is a shortsighted view. Economies are not static, with a limited set of resources to go around. As the work of the economist Paul Romer has shown, economies grow faster when there is more innovation, and having more smart people in the workforce is a key driver of innovation. And the quickest, cheapest way to get more smart people is to make it easy for them to move here. What’s more, historically there has been a clear connection between immigration in the U.S. and entrepreneurship, with immigrants creating companies (and jobs) at a disproportionate rate. In one famous study, the social scientist AnnaLee Saxenian showed that Chinese and Indian immigrants alone founded a quarter of Silicon Valley start-ups between 1980 and 1998, while a 2007 study found that a quarter of all technology and engineering start-ups between 1995 and 2005 were founded by immigrants. On a larger scale, more than forty per cent of the companies in the 2010 Fortune 500 were started by immigrants or their children.

The ship will have pools, massage areas, gyms, rock climbing walls, and indoor soccer fields according to Marty. His model is very Google-esque--the fostering of creativity through colors, aesthetics, and food.

So why do I hate the Startup Act 2.0? Because it's embarrassing.

As a business owner and an American I'm embarrassed that such a fuss is being made over something that has been needed for so long and everyone agrees is necessary. That will clearly help this country over the long term by keeping those people who our own universities educated here, where many of these students want to be, rather than forcing them to leave. As a small business owner it seems so fundamentally right that it's unbelievable that these rules weren't changed decades ago. I hate that.

I also hate that we're celebrating the "bipartisanship" of the proposal. "I would guess that 80 percent of my colleagues in Congress would agree with the visa provisions in this legislation," says one of the bill's sponsors, Senator Jerry Moran. "And what I would encourage is that we not take the attitude or approach that unless we do everything, we can't do anything." With all that Congress has not accomplished during their past few sessions, we're applauding them for agreeing on something so fundamentally obvious and right? And who are the 20% of those that would oppose something like this? I hate that we have elected representatives that actually think this way. It's embarrassing.

We do not find any substantive effect on native scientists and engineers across a range of labor market outcomes like employment levels, mean wages, and unemployment rates.

The new guidance, issued by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, says a company founder may qualify for EB-2 Green Card visa if his or her position would report to a board of directors.

This visa also requires advanced degrees or some exceptional ability, which is "a degree of expertise significantly above that ordinarily encountered in the sciences, arts, or business," according to USCIS.

Similarly, an "immigrant founder" may be eligible for an H-1B visa "if there is a way to demonstrate that if in fact there is a separation between your role as founder and that role as employee," said Chopra in the Webcasted presentation.

Notwithstanding this entirely reasonable explanation for his inability to attend a U.S. deposition, Cisco had the unmitigated gall to commence contempt proceedings for the applicant's "failure" to attend a U.S. deposition. It was, of course, unsuccessful, but it speaks volumes for Cisco's duplicity.

The affidavit made no mention of the fact that United States immigration authorities had refused the applicant entry to the United States. No mention was made that the applicant had no criminal record. No mention was made that the United States Federal Court had ordered a deposition in Vancouver, presided over by a "special master" at which six or more United States lawyers would be present. No mention was made that the criminal complaint "mirrored" a counterclaim brought by Cisco in the main action in which the applicant was seeking large damages in an antitrust suit.

Sinister inferences were suggested, leading to an inference that the applicant would be a flight risk. The affidavit stated that the applicant "is a Nigerian citizen who claims to have citizenship from the United Kingdom", and that he possibly had British citizenship, and that he was in Canada on a Nigerian passport. The latter reference invited an inference he might flee to Nigeria, a country from which extradition was highly unlikely. In fact, U.S. authorities well knew and had a duty to disclose to the issuing judge that the applicant was a citizen of the United Kingdom and possessed a British passport, on which passport he had entered Canada. They also knew and had a duty to disclose that he had been a resident of England, but was currently residing with his wife and child in Switzerland, and that he had travelled from Switzerland to Canada for purposes of the deposition.

"I do share your concerns about illegal immigration and have consistently supported legislation to strengthen our Border Patrol. Our immigration system is in dire need of reforms. This is a national security issue and an economic one as well. We have porous borders and illegal crossings which make us vulnerable on the security front. We have heavy backlogs to process those waiting to become citizens (years-worth) in a system that is highly strained, lengthy and inefficient. There are, as you know, 10 to12 million people in our country without legal status. Each of these issues represents a critical problem which must be addressed and I think they need to be taken up comprehensively to overhaul the system.

While I agree that more needs to be done to curb the flow of illegal immigrants into our country, I shall continue to vote against legislation that in large part places unnecessary burdens on individuals who have legally immigrated to the U.S."

"By enacting a controversial 'emergency' rule in 2008 allowing foreign students who earn degrees in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) in the U.S. to work for American employers for 29 months of Optional Practical Training (OPT) without the need for an H-1B visa, Department of Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff boasted he was 'giving U.S. companies a competitive advantage in the world economy.' Microsoft applauded the move, saying the program would allow U.S. companies to recruit and retain the 'best' science and tech students educated at the top U.S. universities. And last April, the DHS quashed a legal challenge to the program, telling the U.S. Supreme Court that 'the public interest would be disserved' without the program.

Noticeably absent from the DHS brief, however, were any details on the two-year old program's participants. But now, a Computerworld report suggests why the agency may have been less-than-eager to share any details with the Court. Not only is the DHS program dominated by for-profit Stratford University, whose 727 approved OPT STEM extension requests is more than twice the combined total of the entire Ivy League - Brown (26), Columbia (105), Cornell (90), Dartmouth (18), Harvard (27), Princeton (16), Penn (50), and Yale (9) - it turns out the program is also being embraced by IT outsourcing and offshoring companies like Kelly Services, whose entities snagged about 50 approvals, more than twice the combined total of Google (15), Amazon.com (2), Yahoo (2), and Facebook (3). More details on the 20,000 OPT STEM extension requests filed since mid-2008 can be found in Computerworld's interactive database."

Forty years ago there were five workers for every retiree. Now there are three. Within a couple of decades, there will be only two workers per retiree. There's no way just two workers will be able or willing to pay enough payroll taxes to keep benefits flowing to every retiree.

Get it? One logical way to deal with the crisis of funding Social Security and Medicare is to have more workers per retiree, and the simplest way to do that is to allow more immigrants into the United States.

"Despite all [the] best efforts, we do have concerns regarding whether government can rapidly recognize best practices without defaulting to a one-size-fits all approach," they wrote.

"The NIST-based requirements framework in the bill, coupled with government procurement requirements, if not clarified, could have the unintended effect of hindering the development and use of cutting-edge technologies, products, and services, even for those that would protect our critical information infrastructure."

They added the bill might impose a bureaucratic employee-certification program on companies or give the president the authority to mandate security practices.

Here's a way to improve on the Kerry-Lugar plan. Create a true "job creator's visa," one tied directly and only to job creation by new immigrant entrepreneurs. The visa could be a temporary one for immigrants already here on another visa who establish a business. It could then be extended if the firm hires at least one American non-family resident. The visa should become permanent once the enterprise crosses a certain job threshold (such as five or 10 workers). But it would not be tied to financing.

There are plenty of immigrants who might qualify: the one million skilled foreign workers now here on H1-B visas who otherwise must go home after six years, as well as the roughly 60,000 foreign students who earn degrees at American universities each year. These are far larger numbers than those who could qualify under the Kerry-Lugar proposal.

Just as everything seemed to be going so well, I came up to Vancouver on September 24th to renew my H1b visa and it turns out the approval I got last year is not worth it's weight in paper. Upon appearing for my interview, my previous approval notice was held by the consulate till I furnished a ton of extra documentation from our tax filings last year, to a full report of all employees, all of my bank statements right down to the photographs of our work area (as alien founders we cannot have startups in garages and our apartments, it has to be in real offices).

I worked through the rest of Thursday and all through the night gathering all this evidence.... So after working through the night to get the evidence to the officers the very next day by 11:30 am, I was told that my application would take a week to be reviewed.

My biggest concern is that an LLC due to it's structure doesn't pay a salary to it's members but a guaranteed payment. My attorney has already warned me that this is a slippery slope to start explaining to consular officers when the time comes.

Now leaving aside the exorbitant costs of living in a city like Vancouver for a week, I don't have to talk about what an entire week means in startup terms. This particular week in question, since we're in fundraising mode, I have had to cancel a meeting with Comcast Capital and cannot present at the Plug and Play Expo on Thursday Oct 1st - they were nice enough and believed in our product to pretty much waive the $1500 participation fee, only to realize I can't make it.

We all know that the economy is in tough shape these days, and (as always happens in such situations) there's often a misguided push to put up trade barriers to try to force people to "Buy American." Of course, time and time again, such trade barriers have proven to actually do tremendous harm to Americans, rather than help them. We're already seeing this with friendly trading partners like Canada threatening to retaliate. That retaliation harms American jobs much more than any jobs "gained" from such protectionist barriers (as pointed out by the non-partisan and highly respected Peterson Institute). On top of that, by adding barriers on goods that Americans want, the end result is only that Americans end up paying *more* for their goods -- not exactly an outcome consumers are likely to appreciate during an economic downturn.

Granted, it's quite easy to understand the patriotic feeling behind a "Buy American" clause -- and we all want to support our country. But the problem is that in not paying attention to the actual impact, and pretending that there are no "unintended consequences," a Buy American clause can be detrimental to America in the long run. That doesn't seem particularly patriotic.

The Innovation Movement is an effort by the Consumer Electronics Association to make more people aware of important policy issues, and to make sure that Congress actually takes relevant data into account, rather than just focusing on the patriotic headline while ignoring the unpatriotic results.

In this Insight Community Conversation, we're looking for thoughtful and well-written discussions on the pros and cons of a "Buy American" clause for US policies. The best results will be used as posts on the Innovation Movement website.

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