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New Portal to Help Immigrant Entrepreneurs

Posted by: Mark Marich on December 03, 2012 Source: Policy Dialogue on Entrepreneurship

Immigrants looking to start a firm and remain in the United States have a new tool at their disposal—a portal launched by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service to help them navigate the process of registering for and securing visas to extend their stay in the country. Announced last week, Entrepreneur Pathways is more of a user-friendly guide to existing resources on the USCIS site than it is a stand-alone resource.

Currently, the site only provides a “high level overview of the immigration process” as well as a visa guide that outlines “nonimmigrant” visa categories that may be appropriate for them. Nonimmigrant visas are temporary and for those who can demonstrate that they intend to return to their home country. Clearly, the more important category will be for immigrant visa categories that allow for permanent worker status—these resources are said to be slated for inclusion on the site sometime in the future.

Entrepreneur Pathways was developed by the agency’s new Entrepreneur in Residence Initiative that was started in April 2012 and is expected to run through at least April 2013. Next up for USCIS on the topic is a quarterly series of regional meetings—the first two are scheduled for Austin, Texas (February 2013) and Boston, Massachusetts (May 2013).

Category:  Immigration  Tags:  USCIS, Austin, Boston,

1 Comments

RE: New Portal to Help Immigrant Entrepreneurs

March 03, 2013 @ 10:03 AM

Dr. Suresh Kumar said...

My personal experience as an immigrant entrepreneur has been that the USCIS policies are part of the problem that is stifling the growth of the US economy. My research finding calls for the the training of Immigration and Consular Officials
Currently the immigration regulations related to H1 visas are heavily tilted in favor of larger and established corporations with lengthy financial track records. It will help if government officials who adjudicate visas in the United States and those who are involved in issuing the visas at U.S. consulates overseas are given training from the perspective of the strategic planning and flexible manpower needs of a new entrepreneurial venture. Such training will help the USCIS and U.S. consular officers see the bigger picture of how skilled immigrants with high human capital help grow the U.S. economy by starting new ventures with little capital and limited resources. Rather than focus on the past financial performance of the new venture, which in the case of a startup venture is usually weak or in many cases non-existent, while making decisions on visas, consular officials should focus on the potential of the entrepreneur to bootstrap, leverage their human capital and prior work experience to exploit opportunities, grow and create jobs in the United States. Given experiences such as the EB-5 program, this should be easily implemented.