HN Explorer

Today My US Investor Visa Application Was Denied

60 points by jerryji ↗ HN

  Yesterday I left my wife and 3-month old son

    to come to Singapore for my US investor visa
    
    second interview.

  Today my application was denied

    because the visa officer thinks my $65,000

    startup investment is not substantial.

  This application has cost me countless number of

    hours and $10,000+ to prepare

    that I wanted to ask her if I could have

    invested that time and money in my startup

    would it make my investment substantial?

  But I wasn't given a chance to dispute.

  Today is a long day

    that I wonder why America does not welcome

    entrepreneurs

    and have to rant from a hotel whose desk is

    smaller than my laptop.

  But tomorrow I will return to my wife and son

    and continue to work on my startup

    then write a much longer rant someday.

71 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 154 ms ] thread
meterplech
This is another sad example of the US's twisted immigration policy. Brilliant entrepreneurs, scientists, and academics want to come in legally and are rejected, while thousands of others come in illegally.
knowtheory
First, we don't know what his idea was. Obviously he believes in it to have dropped so much cash on it already, but there are all sorts of things that people believe in (FSM FTW). That's not to slight his concept, since we haven't seen it, what's the point in passing judgement.

And actually, your point illustrates quite effectively why there is illegal immigration. If the system is broken, people will try to work around it, rather than through it. Bureaucracy for the lose.

sho
You can look at his startup in his profile - well, I'm presuming it's the same one, it does say "Founder and CEO".
wheels
Not really. There are plenty of examples of that, but this is an example of someone applying for a special kind of visa that they were obviously not qualified for and then not getting it. I'm sorry for them on a personal level, but at an institutional level, the system worked just fine.
ellyagg
Uh, what? Your parent essentially complained that US immigration, institutionally, favors low quality immigrants over high quality. It's hard to fathom how you don't consider this an example of that.
davidw
At an 'institutional level', it's a bunch of horse shit. Sorry, but the whole mess brings out strong feelings: the process to get my wife (who is also the mother of our American daughter), into the US is quite a hassle. And we're talking about someone with a doctorate in biochemistry from a wealthy nation. Tons of similar stories of intelligent, hard working, qualified people being hassled to no end. Remember when Linus' visa was about to expire, and only a ruckus got them to speed the process up?
wheels
The guy applied for an investor's visa. He's not an investor. If your wife applied for an investor's visa and not an I'm-married-to-an-American visa and didn't get it and said, "But I really love my husband." that wouldn't mean that she'd been unfairly denied.
davidw
And what other people and I are saying is that the whole system is quite fucked up and needs a major overhaul. Maybe this guy shouldn't have got in on this particular visa, but it's still lame; I'd much rather people like that have the option to go, and then get encouraged to go home if things aren't working out, or some similar compromise that encourages smart, hard working people to go to the US.
wheels
Sure. I agree, which is why my original statement was essentially, "Yes, there are loads of examples of it being screwed up. This doesn't sound like one of them."

I definitely agree that the US immigration system is pretty broken, but assuming that the US system was fixed, and there were still different kinds of visas, it wouldn't magically be broken again because people got denied for applying for the wrong kind.

dandelany
I think you're missing the point: there's no "wrong kind." There's no way for a non-US Citizen with $65k in the bank to legally come start his or her business in this country, even though its (relatively) easy for people to slip across either border. It's not a matter of "oops, I accidentally applied for the investor visa, I should've picked up the startup-founder visa instead."

PG has written about this idea here: http://www.paulgraham.com/foundervisa.html

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Ennis
Come to Canada! Seriously think about it.

Give these a read as well.

http://www.ictc-ctic.ca/en/Default.aspx

http://investincanada.gc.ca/eng/default.aspx

boris
The Entrepreneur residence to Canada required net worth of CAD$300,000 which is quite a lot more than USD$65,000. Plus there are other requirements such as several years of experience running a business. Finally, if you look at the application processing times, in most countries it takes 1-2 years.

And it doesn't seem there is a way to start a business in Canada without a permanent residence.

Ennis
Yes that's true unforetunately. But getting a work visa in Canada is not difficult. It's likely with his skills he can find a tech job here. If it's that important he has access to the US then being in Canada is the best next option. The extra money would only hurt in his loss of time dedicated to his startup work.
menloparkbum
Isn't there a 6 year visa backlog in Canada for skilled immigrants?
fossb
no... it is usually done in a few months.

The usa has this 6 years backlog..

menloparkbum
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/laws-policy/irpa.asp

"Canada currently has a large backlog of applicants in the skilled worker immigration category, which translates into wait times of as long as six years for people to find out if they can come to Canada. "

Ennis
Again, work visa does not mean immigration. It means he gets to live here and has access to the US if he needs it. And he has access to VCs and startup communities as well.
boris
If he needs a job in order to legally reside in Canada then it means he cannot work on his startup full time.
Ennis
I did some research. You are allowed to borrow up to 70% of the $300,000. This is for Entrepreneur Immigration. For investor class then they need 400000 liquid assets and he can borrow %70 of that as well.

So it is not as impossible as it sounds.

patio11
I feel for you -- I live in Japan and visa issues are near and dear to my heart.

If it makes you feel any better, you can have a successful business without being in the US, and should you later want to move the startup to the US having a successful business and all the fixings (such as a good immigration lawyer) will make the process quite a bit easier than it is when you're "just somebody with a gleam in his eye".

Immigration officials in both the US and Japan are not set up for tech companies, by the way. I used to work in a governmental unit of the prefecture which, ahem, zealously advocated the national government apply its immigration laws in the best interests of our prefectural high tech industry. If you're interested in trying the visa thing again in the near future, see if you can find yourself a stateside advocate like that. (I'd be kind of surprised if California doesn't have at least one state office which does something like that, probably sort of quietly for the obvious reason.)

staunch
I'm sure other Visas can be tough, but I got my spouse visa in Japan in a few weeks from the time I started. A couple simple forms, less than $100 in fees, and a couple trips to the immigration office.

The US is ~$1,400, 6 months, multiple appointments, and a stack of paperwork for the same thing. Really pathetic. There's no excuse (no, not even volume).

sho
I am guessing you are white and from a "tier 1" country? Your experience might have been very different coming from, say, Indonesia. They can go into much greater detail and require higher standards of evidence if they think there could be an economic motive to your move.

I can't speak to the US experience but it's basically the same deal in Australia - a good friend of mine got her spouse visa literally overnight from the Tokyo embassy, but I've heard stories about it taking 18 months to receive the same thing if the applicant is from a developing country.

The situation truly sucks, and I wish they could do a better, faster and more dignity-preserving job, but there is a lot of fraud and motivations of the applicant can often be questionable. A thai-chinese friend once told me that one of her friends needed to marry an Australian for visa reasons, and would pay $25k or more. That opened my eyes a bit. She could just make that much more working here. Guess the occupation.

There's no excuse, but they do have a lot to deal with.

scarface548
Its not about status of the country , each country is given a fixed quota . Usually from developed countries less number of people are trying to come to America than from say a third world country, so the backlog of a applications is less , thus the faster processing.
sho
That may be a factor, but it is not the only factor. When applying for a spouse visa, someone from (say) Norway has little economic incentive to gain the visa. As a general rule of thumb, their visa will be subject to less checks and the marriage assumed to be genuine. They just don't have much motive to lie or try and fake their way through.

Someone moving from (say) Cambodia, however, will face an entirely different situation. They plainly have any number of motives to get the hell out of Cambodia and into a big rich country. These motives can and do lead to fake marriages, fake information, everything. The application will be given a far greater level of scrutiny and will take a lot longer.

Hell, don't take my word for it, Australian immigration spells it out. Here's the official "assessment level" (ie, assumed risk) of people applying for student visas here:

http://www.immi.gov.au/students/students/chooser/574-nonjs.h...

Plan on a miserable experience if you're not from a country in level 1. And you can be sure there's a much more detailed one for internal use, for spouses, etc.

heresy
Too true.

I'm originally from an African country, and trying to get into the US was next to impossible despite my qualifications (valid), experience (in several Western countries) and financial position (good).

Five years on, with New Zealand citizenship, I can travel visa-free virtually everywhere, work in Australia without paperwork, and can expect a short application process to get into the US, based on the experience of a friend of mine, who had the same progression.

It sucks if you're on the other end, but to some extent, a greater degree of scrutiny is warranted when your origin is a country you have motive to get out from and to commit fraud to do so.

delackner
Spousal visas are treated very very differently from business visas in Japan, and I would think most countries. You are married to a citizen of the country, and it would be inhuman to deny you the right to live in the country of your spouse. Inhuman, but sadly all too common in some countries' immigration rules. I'm thinking of the UK citizen friend of mine working in silicon valley, married to a Japanese woman, who was separated from his child and wife for the better part of a year just because US immigration was fucking around with them.
donw
I'll be getting to deal with Japanese immigration soon enough...
vaksel
what's stopping you from doing a web(I'm guessing) startup outside of United States?
CyberFonic
You don't say where you came to Singapore from. I'm guessing that it took you and your family sacrifices to put together $65,000. In a place like Silicon Valley, such a small amount of money (by USA standards) would not last long. If you were to go to a more affordable part of the USA then you might as well be working from where you are now. If your ideas are good, then register a .com domain name, and market it solidly. At the very least, your burn rate will be much lower and you will have more time to make your vision a success.
dryicerx
This is my question as well.

Your website seems to be very web-centric business (according to your user page), what is it that you cannot accomplish regarding this remotely?

jerryji
Fist of all, I must thank all who have taken the time to read and/or comment on my post.

However, the fact that US (or more specifically, Silicon Valley) has given birth to more successful high tech companies per square mile than has anywhere else in the world is not incidental.

Being able to grow a startup in the fertile land of Silicon Valley means closer access to a wide array of different classes of investors, world-class peer entrepreneurs/technologists, and active and mature users, all of which are big advantages over startups elsewhere -- even with the high cost of living taken into consideration.

After all, it's like telling a minority student who was rejected by a top university for (disputablely) unfair reasons that she doesn't need to go to college to succeed, sure the statement could be true -- just unfortunately not statistically.

tptacek
I'm wondering why you're surprised, or if I'm reading the wrong material. The first link on Google is to a site that says only 3000 investment visas are set aside each year, to investors of $500,000-$1,000,000 and(/or) employers that will be create 10 full time jobs in the US.
eugenejen
I think there's a distinction between EB-4 Investor Green Card visa and E-2 treaty investor visa. For EB-4, it takes minimum $1 million and pledge to create 10 jobs or $500k in high unemployed region and 10 jobs. For E-2 visa it usually requires $50k to $100k. Of course $200k is a better amount for immigration authority to consider substantial and there is no quota for visa.
volida
Why did it cost $10,000?
patio11
Immigration law can get expensive in a hurry, and (as an aside which I hope is unrelated to the current discussion) the people who most need it are the least capable of assessing providers and the most likely to get taken to the cleaners by unscrupulous folks.

If you accessed the Internet from outside of the US you'd be bored to tears of ads, in every language, promising a shot at the US Visa lottery for "very reasonable application fees".

Edit: Incidentally -- if you'd like to sit down and discuss your (three page) application for an engineering visa in Japan with someone who speaks English, that will run you about $2,000. You could do it yourself, too (my company and I always do), but for people who are inexpert at the magic words, the lawyer is worth the money. You're paying them largely for their savvy and, ahem, "I'm important enough to have a high-powered lawyer on my side" rather than for their ability to read and fill out forms.

The visa process has rather little to do with you and rather a lot to do with your host country. The letter in support of my most recent application says "Patrick" once and variations of "Japan" about fourteen times. It was written by an HR officer who understands how the game is played.

CyberFonic
Lawyers just love immigration law. They can charge like wounded bulls for what you can essentially do for your self. One friend spent $30,000 for a business visa app and failed to get it. Another just went ahead by himself and successfully got it. His costs, only filing fees and a bit of form filling, photocopying, printing.
zaidf
I sympathize with you. But I cannot help wonder why you thought you would get a visa if you know they are generally given to 500,000-1M investments? Did you know it would be a longshot anyway?

Good luck with your startup!

wammin
I feel for you ... the U.S. visa and immigration process sucks. My wife's parents were denied a visitor's visa to come to our wedding (from Taiwan).

The system is broken, discriminatory, slow and unfair.

chriskelley
A good friend is a very brilliant Welshman (born and raised there until age 18) now living in southern California. His father has been here for 21 years and has his US citizenship. My friend, who runs a very successful business and is also a quality contributor to the local economy, has been stuck in the paperwork system for 7 years now. Every 6-8 months they send him another letter telling him it will be another 6-8 months. He can stay legally because he got here just early enough to miss the "wait for your green-card in your home country" rule - but they won't grant him re-entry if he leaves - so he's stuck. Can't take his son back to Wales to see his grandparents, etc etc.

Meanwhile, his father married a Brazilian trophy wife last year who doesn't work, doesn't volunteer, doesn't contribute economically, who received her green-card about 3 months after they got married.

The system is flawed.

drawkbox
If you are an entrepreneur this is just one more fuel to your fire to get there.
sho
"Today, My US Investor Visa Application Was Denied"

You forgot to write "FML"

gojomo
I'm very sorry. US immigration policy is highly arbitrary and irrational. I hope you succeed wherever you start, and still have the chance and desire to relocate to the US sometime in the future.
jkuria
I support you man! Keep up the fight!
Maro
Given that most startups discussed here are Internet-related, enabling people to do things over the web, the fact that most VCs and entrepeneurs seem to think that you have to physically be in insanely expensive Silicon Valley is pure conformism ("You should be on a plane to Silicon Valley NOW!"). Of course, since they're the ones with money and networking, they turn this arbitrary dogma into a law of investing. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the long-run, this is an acpect that entrepeneurs outside the U.S. can turn against them and outcompete them. Of course it's insanely hard, it's like trying to outcompete romans 2000 years ago.
csbartus
We are still living the American Dream on the Internet too.

Given that I'll loose all my HN karma points I'll have to ask stop thinking in Internet Startup = US.

Stay with your family back home and run a successful business.

Or maybe I'm missing out completely why there is such a gold rush to the valley.

alecco
The funny thing is he is trying to be legit. For 5-10k he could've married some random woman in US to get in, same for his wife.

It's not surprising power is shifting out of US and Europe.

yardie
The power to move to the US or to Western Europe has not shifted anywhere if the news and personal anecdotes are to be believed. A lot of developing countries don't have the infrastructure or the intelligence to create another Silicon Valley. If anything they are further cementing their power because of the credit crisis. I was on the phone with a colleague in Hyderabad and he told me the R&D companies are starving for capital. When everyone was flush with cash it was easy to open a branch in India, China, or Eastern Europe, but a lot of companies are running low and those foreign offices are the first to get cut.

I am aware that they are trying to build their own middle classes, these things take time and it's going to be a long wait before they can be completely self-reliant.

mingyeow
Yup, where did you go to singapore from? (i am from sg)
natch
It's not always easy to get in, which means the US tends to get immigrants who have a lot of initiative. This works out great for us. For you, keep trying. And as others have suggested, work wherever you are to continue developing your business in the meantime.

As an aside, have you considered having a usability professional do an evaluation of your web site and business idea? This kind of third-party opinion might be very valuable. It could even be a student in a usability program at a decent university, to save money.

Which leads to this thought: Now that you've announced to the world that you have a (very small) pile of money, I'm sure many people will be glad to help you spend it. You should be a little more careful and discrete imho.

jseliger
"... I wonder why America does not welcome entrepreneurs and have to rant from a hotel whose desk is smaller than my laptop."

There are one of two possibilities: all is not as it seems based on your story, or because the U.S. immigration "system" is idiotic. The latter is a fact, and the only question is whether it applies to your particular case.

scarface548
As others have said , stay away from America . It's full of nationalist/protectionist rage these days and guess where its all directed at - yeah immigrants . I am assuming the reason you want to move is to collaborate with really smart people and feel the vibe , there are other countries with lot going on for them without all the nonsensical stuff. Come to India , seriously.
yardie
Have you ever heard of anyone applying for an Indian residency visa (IE not tourist)? I have heard everything from you can't get one to they don't even do them. I know they have visas for employees of big companies like Microsoft or Intel. But I have not heard of a single instance of a foreigner going to India as an entrepeneur.
scarface548
Yea , No one seems to do that,because everyone seems to be hell bent on being abused and mistreated by American Redtape without actually evaluating the real benefits .
dbul
then write a much longer rant someday.

This sounds like you are giving up. I try to abstain from uncouth language on HN, but there is a saying: "Shit happens." I know little about this situation, but I do know of other unfair situations: illegal aliens cooking up Japanese food in the back of a restaurant down the street from me; a small company outside of Pittsburgh who hired a Chinese person just so the Chinese guy could get a green card (and then the guy quit as soon as he was on his way).

To quote an inspirational fictional character, no matter how tough you think you are it'll always bring you to your knees and keep you there. Permanently if you let it. You or nobody ain’t never gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep movin forward

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1tXhJniSEc

nailer
Can you please not post in monospace? You don't have any code in your article and it makes things difficult to read.
seshagiric
May be a basic question but did you go through the visa norms before applying? The official site clearly mentions at least $500K as minimal investment (and employ at least 10 people etc) for consideration under the investor visa!

(http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f...)

shiro
Ok this may be a repeat, but what you are looking at is about immigrant visas, a.k.a. Green Cards. I believe what OP is talking is a nonimmigrant visa, probably E-2 treaty investor kind.

Those two visas are so different, thus typically when people are talking about visas they mean nonimmigrant ones, while the immigrant ones are refered as Green Cards. But if you look at the official documents, be careful not to be confused.

seshagiric
Two things about E-2: - substantial investment. Looking over the net it seems 'substantial' means at least $200k - 50% of ownership lies outside USA - Candidate leaves USA at the end of business

I am not sure a start up entrepreneur would be interested or can afford 2 & 3

Ennis
I'll add another note. I'm not condoning this but for the sake of all options being on the table...

If you know a few people who you trust then you can pool all of your money into one bank account in your name to reach the 500k-1M sum. Alternatively you can borrow the sum and hold it for a year or 2 and pay the ridiculous interest that would add up.

Clearly unethical and difficult but it's a very common technique with middle income would-be immigrants to get in on investor visas or as business immigrants.

algul
The key here is that $65,000 is not enough money for a U.S. investor visa. You shouldn't have been surprised at all. If the business idea is a good one, start outside the U.S., and then seek to establish a subsidiary in the U.S. With a proven track record, you'll get your visa, but by then, you won't want it because you won't want to pay U.S. taxes.