That's a worthy goal. Hopefully it can be rewarding in many ways (including financial return on your investment in addition to a sense of satisfaction).
I'd encourage you to aim for something that can 'go big' in terms of employing many many people. One that can potentially attract assistance (be it public or private), and something that leverages local skills. Try to find some arbitrage.
Example: perhaps investigate whether there is an in-sourcing opportunity by hiring Californian IT people and running American call centers with the best of silicon valley answering the phones. It's unpatriotic not to use them. Ok, silly idea.
Most jobs seem to have been lost in retail, construction, manufacturing etc. Perhaps start with the people you want to help most?
I'm not arguing whether the E-2 rules should be adjusted for legimate entrepreneurs or not. I'm just saying that as it stands, I don't want to use it.
You refer to "fairly easily adjust" and do concurrent filing of the 484 and 140 - this is the same as one does after labor certification in the H1B process. However, its not at all clear to me which category of greencard you are referring to with your "fairly easily adjust". I don't think EB-1 applies and the rest take just as long as the H1B to greencard route. Can you clarify which category you are talking about?
The 500k number comes from people confusing the E-2 and the EB-5 I suspect. The EB-5 program gives you a greencard for a 500k$ investment in an disadvantaged area or $1m anywhere else. The money needs to be "at risk".
If there were programs I felt were sufficiently reputable I'd go for it. However, I'd want to quantify the risk. I'd rather not get into a situation where some ski resort gets partially built, goes under and funnily enough its all the immigrants money which disappears into dubious hands.. and the immigrants should just be happy they got their greencard.
My experience as a grad student in CS at a UC left me with the same conclusion. I left, in ABD status a year after getting my MS because of the working conditions. It makes no financial sense to do a PhD in CS unless you want a pure research or Professorship. I'm significantly ahead financially of my peers who completed the PhD program and professionally as well due to my experience.
Of course there are neat ways for PhD holders to sidestep labor certification to hugely speedup up their greencard applications so I am somewhat being punished for making the saner professional/financial decision!
Initial E-2 visas are generally for 2 years with extensions of 2 years at a time (essentially indefinitely if things go well) or 5 years on renewal at the discretion of the immigration officials. I'm told by my lawyers that there has been a strong increase of refusals to renew. Eg. at the London embassy.
It is also a non-immigrant visa. It's not a matter of a simple "adjustment of status" you have to do a greencard application under one of the usual categories which can be non-trivial and an extremely lengthy process depending on your country of origin.
Putting my frustrations to one side, it seems clear to me that there are problems with the program, there are abuses of the program, and there are people like me caught in the middle of it all. However, some of the worst abuses, such as by Indian consulting companies that bring people over and then don't pay them while they are "on the bench" should be solved simply by enforcing the existing rules. Anytime you hear some consultant mention "the bench" there are these types of abuse going on.
Both the Australian and Canadian processes look far more sane to me. The Canadian one also runs roughly along the lines you mention.
I don't know whether Americans have been deterred from entering the field or not. However, I do know that in my particular subfield there is a distinct shortage of qualified people of any nationality.
As it stands, right now, I'm likely to start a company outside the US. I'll create jobs overseas instead of here just because of the hassles I've had with US immigration. I find the situation to be rather illogical.
I'm currently on a H1B and in the greencard queue. Anti-H1B people love to rave about my taking jobs from US citizens. I get to hear it in person from time to time because, since I'm white and speak English with an indeterminate American style accent, people presume I don't object to them bitching about the Indians and Chinese H1B holders while I wait at the coffee stand.
I'd rather start my own company. I've had a startup before in Europe so I know what I'm getting into. Then someone else could take my current job. I'm financially secure (close to $1m cash in the bank in addition to my long-term investments) but:
- I want to solve my immigration status and not resort to non-immigrant temporary visas like E-2
- I'm not happy to just hand $500k to $1m over to an investment of unknown risk to get an EB-5
- There is enough to do while starting up without getting bogged down in convincing some non-expert in the merits of a business plan and a schedule of hiring etc.
- My H1B NIW just got a request for evidence despite my letters of recommendation from "household names" in my particular industry (sorry to be deliberately vague).
- I have a government in another country willing to throw money at me to startup there
Now I could startup abroad and transfer back and jump thru various hoops that way. But, frankly, I have a young family and want to build a permanent base for myself. I rather like Northern California for that but there are many other nice places in the world as well.
shrug it leaves me confused as to why the US is so hostile to my intention to build a home here and create jobs.
I'd be happy to - though I guess I'll have to get one of those "blag" things the kids talk about.
I'm also pondering SUSE's real time extensions. They at least make it easy to get a trial version of their enterprise distribution plus a trial version of the real time extensions to install on top. Redhat of course have a 30 day trial of RHEL but not, as far as I know, of MRG.
30 day trials aren't ideal - I have no intention of going into production without a real license but it'd be rather useful for educational purposes to be able to experiment without a timed trial (especially when hacking in the evenings only on it).
I'd encourage you to aim for something that can 'go big' in terms of employing many many people. One that can potentially attract assistance (be it public or private), and something that leverages local skills. Try to find some arbitrage.
Example: perhaps investigate whether there is an in-sourcing opportunity by hiring Californian IT people and running American call centers with the best of silicon valley answering the phones. It's unpatriotic not to use them. Ok, silly idea.
Most jobs seem to have been lost in retail, construction, manufacturing etc. Perhaps start with the people you want to help most?