Donald Trump is once again at the center of the news, if he ever has ceased to be, and not so much for holding the position of President of the United States, as for planning to carry out another of his controversial initiatives that is in against not only the measures taken by the previous administration, but also against the progress and technological advancement of the United States in particular and of the world in general.
We mean the calls Visa Startup, a regulation that had been proposed by the previous Obama-led administration in order to attract the best talent to the country. And of course, the idea of foreigners coming to the United States is something that the orange president does not like very much.
A new blow against Silicon Valley
The world mecca of technological innovation that is Silicon Valley (California, United States), has one more reason to be depressed about the future that awaits it and, of course, the person responsible for this would be none other than the president of the self-styled country "Leader of the free world", Donald Trump.
Trump seems to care much more about the origin of people, their culture, or perhaps also their skin color, than the talent that they harbor in their brains and that can contribute to the advancement and evolution of their own country in particular and of Humanity usually.
The previous Obama administration had approved as one of its latest measures the so-called Visa Startup, a regulation that, in its first version, would allow any foreigner to obtain residency in the United States if they receive at least $ 250.000 of local investment for your project or idea. The permit would be granted for a period of thirty months, extendable for another thirty additional months.
“More foreigners in the United States”? POTUS must have thought, “Nothing about that”. So among his immediate plans is pull back regulation Visa Startup approved by that previous administration that represented the complete opposite of the ideals of Trump tycoon.
As many of you already know, this is not the first time that Donald Trump has tripped up technology companies in Silicon Valley (and the rest of the United States). Already in full campaign threatened to force Apple to make its "damn products" within borders, even suggesting the introduction of strong protectionist measures, that is, imposing higher taxes on products manufactured outside the country.
And last March, Trump interrupted the process that allowed to obtain the H1-B visa expressly when foreign nationals specialized in computer science, medicine, engineering or mathematics were hired by US companies.
A brake on innovation
Attract new talent to the United States was the goal of the visa startup that Obama approved in extremis, just one day before the end of his term. In addition, guaranteeing the arrival of foreign "geniuses" after obtaining a significant capital, it also ensured greater job creation.
Un study drawn up by the National Foundation for American Policy reveals that half of the startups valued at more than a billion dollars in the United States were founded by foreigners. Uber, Intel, SpaceX or Google are good examples of this, not to mention proper names such as Garret Camp (founder of Uber), Michelle Zatlyn (founder of CloudFlare), Amr Awadallah (Cloudera), Elon Musk (SpaceX and Tesla) and even Steve Jobs who, although he was not an immigrant, Apple would not have existed as such if his biological father had not settled in the United States from Syria.
Representatives of technology companies in the United States, in addition to different associations and lobys related to the field of Silicon Valley and thousands of entrepreneurs have already denounced that these types of initiatives are essential to promote innovation and progress in the country, however, all this seems to matter little to the Trump administration, which already announced that the approval of the Startup Visa will be delayed eight months before finally being annulled.