Editor’s note: Joan Siefert Rose is the president and CEO of the Council for Entrepreneurial Development.

DURHAM, N.C. – I’ve been thinking about how the rhetoric on immigrants in the current political climate is playing with the smart, ambitious people around the world who traditionally have come to America to make a better life.  With the U.S. economy plugging away at a relatively slow, steady rate, will we still be the destination of choice for talented individuals who embrace the risk of uprooting from familiar surroundings to make a bet on a big idea?

We have been fortunate to attract people who see opportunities the rest of us miss. That’s why I’m hopeful that the “startup visa” program for international entrepreneurs proposed by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will continue to put out the welcome mat for foreign-born innovators who create companies that, in turn, provide jobs and wealth. Should the rule be enacted, it would allow (on a case-by-case basis) entrepreneurs with companies that  “provide a significant public benefit” to the U.S. economy, through “rapid business growth and job creation,” to stay in the country for two years and then apply for an extension of up to three years, if necessary.

I recognize that this program, officially known as the International Entrepreneur Rule, is a far cry from comprehensive immigration reform. I also don’t mean to imply that U.S.-born entrepreneurs are any less capable of building great companies.  But it doesn’t make sense to train students or bring people here on a restricted work permit, put them to work in fledgling companies, then send them home just as that enterprise is starting to gain traction.

While much of the support for the startup visa program comes from Silicon Valley, where White House policy advisor Tom Kalil says more than half of all tech startups have an immigrant co-founder, the positive impact of such a program will be felt in other communities that have built supportive environments for entrepreneurs. Cities like Detroit, Buffalo, and Cleveland have begun to attract young companies and investors as they chart a course to transform their economies, and are looking for ways to keep educated talent close to home.
My own organization, the North Carolina-based Council for Entrepreneurial Development, recently recognized our inaugural class in the North Carolina Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame.  Only later did I realize that the two company founders we honored – Bob Young of the open source software company Red Hat, and Dennis Gillings of Quintiles, the world’s biggest contract research organization – were immigrants. Young grew up in an entrepreneurial family in Canada, and saw opportunity in Raleigh in the early days of the Internet.  Dr. Gillings was a mathematical genius who comes from a fishing community in England, and turned his research at the University of North Carolina into a predictive analytics powerhouse.

Both of these companies are now worth more than a billion dollars and employ hundreds of people. Admittedly, the path to a Green Card was simpler in those times. But what if we had told these founders that their time was up? Or, worse yet, they hadn’t considered making a move to North Carolina because they didn’t feel welcome?

Today, the Research Triangle region is home to hundreds of tech and life science startups, many with diverse founding teams. At the tech community HQ Raleigh, founder and CEO of the photo sharing app FotoSwipe, Sylvain DuFour, is French. Other teams in the incubator include founders from Nicaragua and Venezuela. A Russian-born researcher at the University of North Carolina, Alex Ermoshkin, helped develop the technology for the 3D printing company Carbon, which is funded by Sequoia Capital. About one-third of Duke University’s students in the prestigious Fuqua School of Business MBA program are non-U.S. citizens. How many might be capable of building the next Proctor & Gamble, Pfizer, Ebay, Google or PayPal – all of which had immigrant co-founders?

The startup visa program surely is not perfect, but it would provide some stability for foreign-born entrepreneurs who are making significant contributions to building promising companies. And it may be a sign that the U.S. remains open for business for those with talent, drive, and the capacity for taking risks – in other words, those with the entrepreneurial spirit.

(C) CED

Read the full post at:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/joansiefertrose/2016/10/01/why-the-u-s-should-put-out-the-welcome-mat-for-foreign-entrepreneurs/#785d44c02326