Since inadequate legal immigration policy in the United States prevents many international entrepreneurs from crossing the Pacific to Silicon Valley to create jobs, one California company plans to meet them in the middle – of the ocean.
In order to preserve Silicon Valley’s reputation as the world’s leader in technology innovation, Blueseed is building a Visa-free offshore technology incubator.
The company wants to “…enable countless great ideas and talented individuals to test themselves in the hotbed of Silicon Valley,” according to the Blueseed website. “With our incubator, startups and individuals will also get a chance to establish the connections and capital necessary to move their operations onto land if they so choose.”
The Blueseed team is responding to an American legal immigration policy that leaves many international technology workers on the outside looking in when American companies could be hiring them and creating more jobs.
The U.S. government gives out about 140,000 visas every year to skilled workers from other countries. The State Department restricts those H-1B visas so that no more than seven percent of that 140,000 can come from any specific country. This means workers from countries like India and China get just as many employment-based visas as workers from Iceland and Greenland.
The year’s supply of H-1B visas is regularly taken in the first couple of months into the fiscal year.
There are bills under consideration in Congress that would lift some of those restrictions and make it marginally easier for skilled workers to come to American technology companies.
But Blueseed is not going to wait and see. In an interview with ARS Technia, Blueseed CEO Max Marty, a son of Cuban immigrants, admitted that it would be better if the United States just updated and modernized its policy.
While trying to benefit from inadequacies in U.S. immigration law, Blueseed also will need to depend on the State Department’s generosity. Part of the company’s sales pitch is that entrepreneurs would be able to make frequent trips using B-1 visas that allow international businesspeople to come to the United States for training, conferences and even meetings, according to ARS Technia.
The next step for the company is to raise money to finance the ship, as its projected 300-person crew and interior would make it feel like an office. Blueseed announced in late November that Paypal founder Peter Thiel will lead the company’s seed financing round.
The Blueseed vessel would be parked about 12 nautical miles from Half Moon Bay – south of San Francisco and west of Palo Alto, Calif.
A. Banerjee is a Houston immigration lawyer in Texas. Before selecting an immigration lawyer in Houston Texas, contact the Law Offices of Annie Banerjee by visiting their information filled web site at http://www.visatous.com.
