Startup Visa Act Supporters Head to DC

This week, a group of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists descended upon Washington D.C. for some good ol' fashioned citizen lobbying in support of the Startup Visa Act, which I wrote about last week. Introduced by Senators Kerry (D-MA) and Lugar (R-IN), the legislation creates a class of visas for foreign-born entrepreneurs backed by qualified U.S. venture investors. It's a key issue for anyone who cares about U.S. competitiveness, as well as supporting innovators around the globe.

As a bit of background, the Startup Visa Act would create a new visa class solely for foreign company founders with $250,000 in U.S. venture investment. If after two years, they had created five full-time jobs and received another $1 million in investment (or achieved revenue of $1 million), they would automatically receive permanent resident status.

The act's proponents argue it's a pure win for the U.S. economy, which would get a boost in its ability to attract entrepreneurial talent from around the globe who can create jobs right here. Or, as John Kerry put it to BusinessWeek, "This bill is a small downpayment on a cure to global competitiveness."

And those keeping score tend to be worried that our edge in that competitiveness is slipping. Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World, and Kishore Mahbubani's New Asian Hemisphere both convincingly suggest that the "rise of the rest" is making it easier for global companies to locate and build outside of traditional hubs of industry and innovation.

Further, the myopic view that the rise in global competitiveness is just about lower cost elsewhere misses the fact that these days, talent can be educated and incubated anywhere now. (An op-ed by Thomas Friedman this week makes this point, as well.)

Folks like Zakaria and Mahbubani aren't saying that the rise of the rest is a bad thing. Far from it. Indeed, their point is that if the U.S. embraces the fact that so much of the world is running on its market-driven model of innovation, the country can remain a leader in the transition to a global information economy.

A key part of that effort is giving entrepreneurs the chance to build their companies and assemble resources from wherever they can. Foreign entrepreneurs building companies in the U.S. (or any country away from their home) not only create the raw value in their companies in the form of dividends -- they can also help to more closely knit economies and countries.

These are the types of iniatives that venture capitalists like Dave McClure (in many ways the public Master of Ceremonies for the Startup Visa movement) are discussing with officials this week in Washington. According to McClure's blog, their group met yesterday with Sens. Kerry and Lugar, as well as Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO), Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO), representatives from the White House, State Department and more.

To keep fully up to date, check out StartupVisa.com, or follow Dave McClure (@davemcclure), Eric Ries (@ericries), and Brad Feld (@bfeld) on Twitter.

To get more involved, check out the action campaign the StartupVisa folks have created -- and sign our petition to pass the Startup Visa Act, as well.

Photo Credit: Rambling Traveler