On the facts as presented, Dr Sell should sue for libel (in the UK of course) and likely get an off-court settlement for a juicy sum of money AND a prominent retraction and apology. With the prospects so good, he should have no trouble finding strong lawyers (barristers, whatever) to take the case on contingency fees.
"If an immigrant is on a work visa now, how easy is it for him to start his own business?": for H1B visas the answer is unambiguous, and is, "essentially impossible". A H1B visa transfer is only for the purpose of moving from one employer to another; if the visa holder tries staying around without an employer, e.g. by founding their own startup, they'll be expelled.
I have never heard any proposal for "fixing the flaw in the system" by allowing the H1B visa holder to keep working in the US _without_ a sponsoring employer, and it's not clear what such a fix might be, except something along the lines of Dr. Graham's proposal (visas specifically for startup founders, or extension of H1B criteria from highly qualified employees with a sponsoring employer to cover also startup founders with a sponsoring capitalist among Dr. Graham's proposed roster of "qualified venture capital investors").
Google, for example, started business with zero employees (just the two founders -- one US-born, one foreign-born) and soon hired its first employee, Craig Silverstein. But if the founders had to meet EB-5 standards before starting their business, Google would not have qualified: zero or one employees (not that huge number TEN at the start!) and only 100,000 dollars' capital investment (not the million dollars that EB-5 would require *to start* in a startup-favorable areas such as Silicon Valley).
Also see W.E.Peterson's "Almost Perfect", http://www.wordplace.com/ap/index.shtml: chapter two narrates how SSI, the startup that later became WordPerfect Corp. started with zero full-time employees (just the founders and some part-time contractors) and an initial investment of $7,000 (actually a loan to the company from one of the founders, who was soon able to get repaid from the company's organic cashflow).
These, Google's and SSI's, are TYPICAL stories for hi-tech startups (as is, for example, Hewlett-Packard's, see http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/histnfacts/timeline/hist_30s.html: initial investment $538, initial employees two [they're _counting_ the two founders]) and show well how such startups at their beginnings just don't come even CLOSE to meeting the "million dollars, 10 full-time employees (beyond the foreign founders)" required by EB-5.
Paul Graham suggests visas for founders of *startups*: those, by definition, are firms that start small (and generally on a shoestring), and so would never meet the EB-5 requirements -- initial investment of at least a million dollars (or 500,000 in a targeted employment area, which would generally be a disastrous place for a hi-tech venture) and creating at least 10 full-time jobs (or maintaining jobs in "a business that has been in existence for at least two year" and is in a bad crisis -- the very opposite of a successfull *startup*, in other words).
So, in short, it is absurd to claim that EB-5 can in any way substitute for Dr. Graham's proposal.
"Wiht all due respect to Google punks I would not put them on the same line with Einstein and Tesla" -- but in terms of creating jobs, those "punks" were in fact WAY ABOVE the geniuses you mention. As the article Mike links to point out, immigrants were founders of companies currently providing over half the jobs in Silicon valley -- not just Google, but also intel, eBay, Yahoo, etc, etc.
You claim "No one cares about the honest person who comes here for work, is willing to work and abide by our rules" -- and it's easy to show how wrong you are. For example, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, asked Microsoft to lay off, preferentially, H1B-holding "honest persons who came here for work" &c -- he doesn't care one whit about their honesty, of course!, he cares about the fact that they can't vote for or against him, while US Citizens (whether honest or not, as long as they're not convicted of felonies) DO have the vote. Similarly, institutions getting stimulus money can't hire H1B workers, etc, etc.
Having originally come to this great country with a H1B, I'm very aware of the naked hatred that the nativists always target against ALL immigrants, quite apart from the latter's honesty &c. Until and unless you've been targeted by anonymous phone calls in the middle of the night threatening you with bodily harm for daring to be an immigrant and calling you "dago" or worse, I don't think you're as qualified as somebody who has.
Anybody who grew up in Italy in the '60s can't cease being amazed at how astonished everybody seems to be by the "discovery" that ads can be intrinsically valuable and desirable content... Carosello taught us in our childhood and we'll never forget.
See http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carosello if you read Italian, or http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,842076,00.html?promoid=googlep for a 1965 Time article summarizing TV ads in Europe at the time -- the lede, """When Italian mothers wish to punish their children these days, they often warn: "Tonight you won't watch Carosello."""", is perfectly true, as Italians of my generations (we were the children so threatened) can testify to this day.
Europe's diffidence towards commercialism (from both leftish parties and traditional conservatives) allowed VERY limited numbers of TV ads back then, and the rarity made the spots precious and (for the advertiser) worth investing LOTS of production values in (think of Superbowl ads for a US parallel).
The results were shining -- search the web for Carosello and you'll see abiding glowing testimonials, even though the ads only ran 1957-1977 and their glory days were actually over in the '70s.
Those ads' effectiveness was also studied in depth by worried psychologists, e.g. cfr http://books.google.com/books?id=QhJxExp-lzYC&pg=PA291&lpg=PA291&dq=carosello+advertisements&source=web&ots=8DdQJdu09P&sig=fhCgX6Z6futOUJwtjmYDLQJMlpc&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=8&ct=result (other important journal articles can be found if you have access to JSTOR).
Adversion to ads comes from over-exposure to huge number of unmemorable ads with no production values...!
"France into Austria"...? The "latest" clash between these two powers was in 1859 in the War of Italian Independence. Austria had been occupying much of Northern Italy for generations; France intervened in alliance with those Northern Italians who had remained independent (Piedmont, essentially), defeated Austria, freed most of the Austrian-ruled lands, and allowed the formation of the Kingdom of Italy (the reigning family of the latter ceded Savoy, their ancestral lands, and Nice, to France as part of the bargain). Never heard THAT "called an invasion" (though I admit that, due to my ancestry, I'm more familiar with the Italian and French viewpoints on this, than with the Austrian one).
I've also not heard US sources call the conquests of Texas, California &c "an invasion" (though I do suspect the Mexicans, who used to own these lands, and the Native Americans, who owned them earlier, might well do so). Anyway, these were more-or-less organized movements based essentially on force of arms -- the latter aspect is key to defining "an invasion" (nobody's ever called the movement of huge groups of Africans into the Americas "an invasion", as the Africans arrived unarmed and in fact under duress, while "invasion" means the incoming people fight to occupy lands against the previous occupiers).
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Ferruccio.
looks like a good case for a libel lawsuit
On the facts as presented, Dr Sell should sue for libel (in the UK of course) and likely get an off-court settlement for a juicy sum of money AND a prominent retraction and apology. With the prospects so good, he should have no trouble finding strong lawyers (barristers, whatever) to take the case on contingency fees.
Re:
"If an immigrant is on a work visa now, how easy is it for him to start his own business?": for H1B visas the answer is unambiguous, and is, "essentially impossible". A H1B visa transfer is only for the purpose of moving from one employer to another; if the visa holder tries staying around without an employer, e.g. by founding their own startup, they'll be expelled.
I have never heard any proposal for "fixing the flaw in the system" by allowing the H1B visa holder to keep working in the US _without_ a sponsoring employer, and it's not clear what such a fix might be, except something along the lines of Dr. Graham's proposal (visas specifically for startup founders, or extension of H1B criteria from highly qualified employees with a sponsoring employer to cover also startup founders with a sponsoring capitalist among Dr. Graham's proposed roster of "qualified venture capital investors").
Re: how many people are in a startup
Google, for example, started business with zero employees (just the two founders -- one US-born, one foreign-born) and soon hired its first employee, Craig Silverstein. But if the founders had to meet EB-5 standards before starting their business, Google would not have qualified: zero or one employees (not that huge number TEN at the start!) and only 100,000 dollars' capital investment (not the million dollars that EB-5 would require *to start* in a startup-favorable areas such as Silicon Valley).
Also see W.E.Peterson's "Almost Perfect", http://www.wordplace.com/ap/index.shtml: chapter two narrates how SSI, the startup that later became WordPerfect Corp. started with zero full-time employees (just the founders and some part-time contractors) and an initial investment of $7,000 (actually a loan to the company from one of the founders, who was soon able to get repaid from the company's organic cashflow).
These, Google's and SSI's, are TYPICAL stories for hi-tech startups (as is, for example, Hewlett-Packard's, see http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/histnfacts/timeline/hist_30s.html: initial investment $538, initial employees two [they're _counting_ the two founders]) and show well how such startups at their beginnings just don't come even CLOSE to meeting the "million dollars, 10 full-time employees (beyond the foreign founders)" required by EB-5.
Re: EB-5 visa requires a million-$ investment
Paul Graham suggests visas for founders of *startups*: those, by definition, are firms that start small (and generally on a shoestring), and so would never meet the EB-5 requirements -- initial investment of at least a million dollars (or 500,000 in a targeted employment area, which would generally be a disastrous place for a hi-tech venture) and creating at least 10 full-time jobs (or maintaining jobs in "a business that has been in existence for at least two year" and is in a bad crisis -- the very opposite of a successfull *startup*, in other words).
So, in short, it is absurd to claim that EB-5 can in any way substitute for Dr. Graham's proposal.
Re: Re: @ where is your proof?
"Wiht all due respect to Google punks I would not put them on the same line with Einstein and Tesla" -- but in terms of creating jobs, those "punks" were in fact WAY ABOVE the geniuses you mention. As the article Mike links to point out, immigrants were founders of companies currently providing over half the jobs in Silicon valley -- not just Google, but also intel, eBay, Yahoo, etc, etc.
nativists DO care about (against) ALL immigrants, honest or not
You claim "No one cares about the honest person who comes here for work, is willing to work and abide by our rules" -- and it's easy to show how wrong you are. For example, U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, asked Microsoft to lay off, preferentially, H1B-holding "honest persons who came here for work" &c -- he doesn't care one whit about their honesty, of course!, he cares about the fact that they can't vote for or against him, while US Citizens (whether honest or not, as long as they're not convicted of felonies) DO have the vote. Similarly, institutions getting stimulus money can't hire H1B workers, etc, etc.
Having originally come to this great country with a H1B, I'm very aware of the naked hatred that the nativists always target against ALL immigrants, quite apart from the latter's honesty &c. Until and unless you've been targeted by anonymous phone calls in the middle of the night threatening you with bodily harm for daring to be an immigrant and calling you "dago" or worse, I don't think you're as qualified as somebody who has.
Carosello
Anybody who grew up in Italy in the '60s can't cease being amazed at how astonished everybody seems to be by the "discovery" that ads can be intrinsically valuable and desirable content... Carosello taught us in our childhood and we'll never forget.
See http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carosello if you read Italian, or http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,842076,00.html?promoid=googlep for a 1965 Time article summarizing TV ads in Europe at the time -- the lede, """When Italian mothers wish to punish their children these days, they often warn: "Tonight you won't watch Carosello."""", is perfectly true, as Italians of my generations (we were the children so threatened) can testify to this day.
Europe's diffidence towards commercialism (from both leftish parties and traditional conservatives) allowed VERY limited numbers of TV ads back then, and the rarity made the spots precious and (for the advertiser) worth investing LOTS of production values in (think of Superbowl ads for a US parallel).
The results were shining -- search the web for Carosello and you'll see abiding glowing testimonials, even though the ads only ran 1957-1977 and their glory days were actually over in the '70s.
Those ads' effectiveness was also studied in depth by worried psychologists, e.g. cfr http://books.google.com/books?id=QhJxExp-lzYC&pg=PA291&lpg=PA291&dq=carosello+advertisements&source=web&ots=8DdQJdu09P&sig=fhCgX6Z6futOUJwtjmYDLQJMlpc&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=8&ct=result (other important journal articles can be found if you have access to JSTOR).
Adversion to ads comes from over-exposure to huge number of unmemorable ads with no production values...!
Re: The US Immigration policy is broken...
"France into Austria"...? The "latest" clash between these two powers was in 1859 in the War of Italian Independence. Austria had been occupying much of Northern Italy for generations; France intervened in alliance with those Northern Italians who had remained independent (Piedmont, essentially), defeated Austria, freed most of the Austrian-ruled lands, and allowed the formation of the Kingdom of Italy (the reigning family of the latter ceded Savoy, their ancestral lands, and Nice, to France as part of the bargain). Never heard THAT "called an invasion" (though I admit that, due to my ancestry, I'm more familiar with the Italian and French viewpoints on this, than with the Austrian one).
I've also not heard US sources call the conquests of Texas, California &c "an invasion" (though I do suspect the Mexicans, who used to own these lands, and the Native Americans, who owned them earlier, might well do so). Anyway, these were more-or-less organized movements based essentially on force of arms -- the latter aspect is key to defining "an invasion" (nobody's ever called the movement of huge groups of Africans into the Americas "an invasion", as the Africans arrived unarmed and in fact under duress, while "invasion" means the incoming people fight to occupy lands against the previous occupiers).