US startup visas to attract best IT entrepreneurs

Visas aim to attract best IT entrepreneurs from the UK and elsewhere to offset competition from China and India

Start-up visas would allow immigrants to set up business in the US

A proposal that will allow innovative entrepreneurs from the UK and elsewhere to set up a business in the US will be debated in Congress this week.

The proposal was made by congressman and IT entrepreneur Jared Polis with the aim of clawing back ground in technology innovation currently being lost to India and China. It is part of a wider proposed overhaul to the immigration system.

The issue would potentially swell the ranks of Silicon Valley, where even now, half the tech company founders are immigrants.

Krill Makharinsky, co founder of YouNoodle, a company that monitors the start-up sector, said: "There are similar programmes in Canada, the UK and Australia, and all these countries are vying for the top entrepreneurs. US citizens make up just 10-20 per cent of the world's talent. To only consider them would be extremely short sighted."

YouNoodle has also released estimated figures showing that if 10,000 start up visas were made available, over 3,000 additional new innovative companies would set up in the US each year, generating more than 10,000 jobs per annum.