White House Announces Proposed New Rule for Immigrant Entrepreneurs

Immigrant entrepreneurs would be allowed to remain in the United States for an initial period of up to two years, and, conditional upon meeting certain benchmarks, could potentially stay in the country for one additional period of up to three years under a newly proposed rule by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) branch of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). As part of the International Entrepreneur Rule, which is now open for a 45-day comment period, certain international entrepreneurs would have an opportunity to start or scale their businesses in the United States.  

In an official blog post by White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Deputy Director for Technology and Innovation Tom Kalil and Assistant Director for Entrepreneurship Doug Rand, the authors note that the new reform would propose clear criteria to identify those entrepreneurs with the potential to provide significant public benefit to the United States. Evaluating entrepreneurs on a case-by-case basis, the proposed rule would consider factors such as: the entrepreneur’s ownership stake (at least 15 percent) and leadership role in the startup; the growth potential of the startup; competitive research grants of at least $100,000 from federal, state, and local government agencies provided to the firm; and the investment of at least $345,000 by qualified American investors.

The new rule would update the already-enacted Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows the U.S. government to grant individuals entry into the United States for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or “significant public benefit” on a case-by-case basis, according to an article in Wired. The International Entrepreneur Rule would expand on the definition of “significant public benefit” to include companies with high-growth potential, the article notes.

Immigrant Entrepreneurship, a recently released paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research authored by Sari Pekkala Kerr of Wellesley College and William Kerr of Harvard Business School examines the impacts of immigrants on entrepreneurship. The authors find evidence that businesses started by immigrant entrepreneurs generally perform better than native businesses with respect to employment growth over three- and six-year horizons, with the strongest employment growth impacts for immigrants found in high-wage businesses and high-tech sectors. The Digest has previously highlighted research from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) detailing the critical role immigrants play in developing some of the most notable inventions in the U.S. SSTI has also covered research from the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP), which found that a majority of startup companies valued at $1 billion or more were started by immigrants.