This exec, who was stopped coming into the country at Boston’s Logan Airport because of an inconsistency of his title on a document,  was able to get one message out to a colleague before the chains went on. The tech community network was tapped, a “war room” was assembled where 5 people called lawyers and politicians, said Reed Sturtevant, an entrepreneur and investor recounted the tale at TechStars Boston Demo Day on Wednesday.  ”After a lot of work from these people, after two nights in jail, this founder was released and is back at work,” said Sturtevant, obviously emotional about the experience.

Sturtevant then introduced Ali Noorani of the National Immigration Forum who spoke of the need for real immigration reform, not just for the foreign-born PhDs, engineers, and blue-collar workers affected but also for the sake of law enforcement officials and for the business community that needs fresh ideas and talent at all levels.

Ali Noorani of the National Immigration Forum speaking at TechStars Boston Demo Day.

Noorani’s organization is trying to build consensus with constituencies that might surprise onlookers — law enforcement agencies and religious organizations. “Our theory is if you hold a Bible, wear a badge or own a business, you want a common-sense solution,” he said.

His organization has won support among southern Baptist churches in Missouri, from anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist and Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who wants police to “chase murderers, not landscapers and nannies,”  Noorani said.

This is a timely topic. Earlier in the day, at his first press conference since re-election,  President Barack Obama stressed the need for reform and said the public will is there for it now. The strong turnout of Latino voters has already encouraged some Republicans to reconsider their hardline stance about immigration, he said. (As a refresher,  Republican nominee Mitt Romney had been a pragmatist on immigration before taking a hard right., Romney suggested that illegal residents  ”self-deport” as part of the process of gaining legal status.)

In the past, Senator John McCain and former President George W. Bush, also supported immigration reform, evidence that this was not always a partisan issue. Now with so many votes at stake, the president thinks Republicans will be motivated to support change. “We need to seize the moment,” Obama said.

In addition, the president said:

“I am a believer that if you’ve got a PhD in physics, or computer science who wants to stay here, and start a business here, we shouldn’t make it harder for them to stay here, we should try to encourage him to contribute to this society. I think that the agricultural sector, obviously has very specific concerns about making sure that they’ve got a workforce that helps deliver food to our table. So there’re gonna be a bunch of components to it, but I think whatever process we have needs to make sure border security’s strong, needs to deal with employers effectively, needs to provide a pathway for the undocumented here, needs to deal with the DREAM Act kids.”

The Washington Post has the full transcript of the presidential press conference.

Feature photo courtesy of Flickr user DIAC Images

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I’m writing this from the Vancouver, British Columbia airport, where I am waiting for a flight to San Francisco after being detained by U.S. Customs for so long that I missed my original flight. A border patrol agent flagged me for “secondary inspection” because (as far as I can tell) I work for a company that exists only on the Internet and has writers — like me — who work from countries other than the U.S. Based on their responses to me over the hour or so I was detained, this seemed to confuse the agents I spoke with, and that got me thinking about some of the issues behind the future of work and how it is changing thanks to the web.

Ironically, I have been thinking a lot about those topics already, because I am flying to San Francisco in order to take part in GigaOM’s Net:Work conference on Thursday. The whole point of the conference is to talk about how the Internet is changing the way we work, and how companies and individuals need to adapt to these new realities in order to prosper. Among those realities are the fact that many companies — including GigaOM itself — have an increasingly distributed workforce, and that means employees who work remotely from different countries, both on contract and on staff.

So while I am an employee of GigaOM, I work from Toronto. But I don’t work for the Canadian subsidiary of GigaOM, because there isn’t one — at least not in the usual legal sense; and I don’t work in the Canadian office of the company, because there isn’t one of those either (unless you include my home office). Like many virtual or web-based companies, GigaOM has writers and other staff who work in all kinds of places, including Britain, Canada and a number of U.S. states.

Was it because I am a blogger?

Like many people who get detained by U.S. Customs when trying to enter the U.S., I don’t really know why I was flagged for “secondary inspection,” or why the border agent spent so long assessing my case (releasing me just five minutes before my flight was scheduled to take off). Was it because they were concerned that, by working from Toronto for a U.S. publication, I am somehow taking writing jobs away from Americans? Possibly. Or was it that by coming to the U.S. to take part in a conference, I am preventing worthy citizens from doing that work instead? I don’t know.

The first agent I spoke to wanted to know a lot about the conference. What was it about? The future of work and how it’s being disrupted by the Internet, I said. Who attends these conferences? Different types of people, I said — executives, entrepreneurs, anyone interested in work. Could I attend this conference, the agent asked? Sure, I said.

After being told to go and sit in a special holding area, where I waited for half an hour in the border equivalent of the DMV line, another agent asked most of these questions again: Who do you work for? GigaOM, I said. She wrote the words down on a sticky note. And what kind of company is it? It’s a blog, I said. “A “blog?” she asked, spitting the word out. Do you manage any employees? No, I said. What do you do? I write. About what? The Internet, I said. After another half an hour, with no explanation, she led me to the door: “Have a nice day,” she said, as she watched me sprint for the gate to see my plane departing without me.

The future of work is inherently borderless

I have no idea whether the agents I spoke to know anything about blogs, or whether they are aware of how the Internet is changing the way we work, and the way companies are organized, or how corporations function from a legal perspective. But they seemed to get hung up on whether I worked in an office, or for a Canadian subsidiary of GigaOM, or whether I was a manager, and what my exact duties were. The idea that I could just write about the Internet for any company located anywhere — including the U.S. — and get paid for doing it seemed to take them by surprise.

Am I taking jobs away from Americans by writing blog posts from Toronto, and should the U.S. be concerned about that kind of activity? I honestly don’t know. All I know is that anyone living anywhere theoretically has the ability to do what I do, for any company based anywhere in the world — just like anyone can be a journalist, or write software or develop apps or design products, or edit books or movies or music, or do a thousand other things that only require a PC and an Internet connection.

That can cause problems for governments, obviously, since they are used to seeing jobs as things that can be contained by national borders and put in discrete little boxes for neat categorization, so that the visas can be issues (and taxes can be assessed). But the reality is that many of us don’t live in such a neat and tidy world any more, and while that may look like a threat to some, it’s also a huge opportunity — and that’s part of what we mean when we talk about the future of work.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr users CBP Photography and Wesley Fryer

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In the meantime, Britain has managed to enact a similar outcome despite undergoing a change of government, debating the ideas and having to institute the changes to immigration laws. In fact, the pace has been so rapid that new rules to grant visas to entrepreneurs will come into force in just three weeks. It’s no surprise officials are crowing about it:

“Entrepreneurs and investors can play a major part in our economic recovery, and I want to do everything I can to ensure that Britain remains an attractive destination for them,” said Damian Green, the Minister of State for Immigration. “Last year we issued far too few visas to those who wish to set up a business or invest in the U.K. — I intend to change that.”

It’s very positive news for entrepreneurs who want to set up in Britain, and should be greeted with cheers for anyone wanting to see the technology scene flourish.

Most of the new rules are aimed at speeding up citizenship for big investors or entrepreneurs who contribute to the economy. In the past, for example, anyone investing large amounts of money in Britain had to live there at least 275 days each year and wait five years before they qualified for citizenship. Now you can speed that up with the amount you contribute to the economy — £5 million ($8 million USD) will mean you qualify in three years, £10 million ($16 million USD) will mean citizenship in two years — and you only need to spend half your time in the U.K. Entrepreneurs who bring at least £5 million over three years or create 10 jobs in Britain will be similarly fast-tracked.

The actual startup visa, if you want to call it that, is something different. It modifies the existing visa for entrepreneurs (which currently requires £200,000, or $320,000, of investment) so they can potentially become residents with just £50,000 in funding. Achieving that requires that you’re designated as a “high-potential business,” though what that means isn’t exactly clear.

Still, it’s testament to the work of people like Reshma Sohoni, who runs the Seedcamp mentoring program, and local venture capitalist Alex Van Someren, of Amadeus Capital, who have worked on the rules. It’s a remarkable achievement, really, given the anti-immigrant position the ruling Conservative party has traditionally dabbled in — but then I suppose hundreds of millions of investment is enough to change most people’s minds.

It’s already being cheered on by British tech media, who are reveling in the fact that they’ve beaten their transatlantic cousins to the punch. But for anyone downhearted by slow progress in Washington, it’s worth remembering a couple of things.

To begin with, the U.K. already had something like the proposed U.S. version, since entrepreneurs with $320,000 were eligible. This just lowers the bar a little more.

Then there’s the fact that Britain, which has a population of approximately 60 million people, already has access to a pool of more than 400 million potential immigrants, since it’s part of the European Union. That means any citizen from one of 27 European countries, from Ireland in the West to Cyprus in the East, can live and work freely in Britain if they choose to. It even means, thanks to the bizarre quirks of empire, that individuals from the South American territory of French Guiana or the Caribbean island of Martinique are able to do the same.

And one of the crucial elements of the latest American proposals — allowing workers to switch from an H1-B with only a minimal barrier — doesn’t apply to the British system, where there are now extra allowances from switching from a U.K. work visa that’s tied to your employer.

Don’t get me wrong; there are plenty of reasons to be pleased about a British startup visa, but Silicon Valley need not get too downhearted just yet.

Image courtesy of Flickr user mroach

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When I was 8 years old, my father explained to me the secret to American prosperity.

Immigrants come to the United States and take menial jobs so that their children have a chance at a better future, he told me. While the jobs they take are below their intrinsic capabilities, they’re focused on giving their children a better life, not personal job satisfaction. Second-generation children, seeing how hard their parents work to give them an opportunity, in turn work hard at school, where, he noted, they often focus on mathematics and science in pursuit of the economic returns promised by careers in engineering and medicine. Third-generation kids figure the economic return on effort expended is better for business and legal professionals and pursue those professions instead of technical ones.  By the fourth generation, any immigration-related incentives to work hard are largely nonexistent.

It was a gross generalization used to explain to a child the importance of immigration, but one that I have since found to be generally accurate.

On this 233rd celebration of U.S. Independence Day, in the midst of the worst economic recession in at least a lifetime, there is a national debate taking place as to the direction of the country. And while I’m confident that we will preserve our democracy and capitalism, I’m concerned about the tone and tenure of the discussion around immigration. Smart immigration policies will do more for American innovation and productivity than better math and science education, more spending on basic research and additional venture capital combined. If we get strategic about immigration, I believe the U.S. can preserve its economic leadership position in the world far longer than anyone currently expects.

Why immigration is more important to innovation than broad-based science education

Shortly after President Obama was elected, The New York Times published an article by Ian Ayres in which he expressed support for appointing Larry Summers as Treasury Secretary. The article quotes Dr. Summers on his assumption that top physics researchers are 3-4 standard deviations above the mean in terms of I.Q. While I don’t have evidence to support his assumption, my intuition is that he’s right, including when he notes what a small group of people these great thinkers represent. Dr. Summers states:

“If…one is talking about physicists at a top-25 research university, one is not talking about people who are two standard deviations above the mean. And perhaps it’s not even talking about somebody who is three standard deviations above the mean. But it’s talking about people who are three-and-a-half, [or] four standard deviations above the mean in the 1 in 5,000, [or] 1 in 10,000 class.”

If we assume that talent is evenly distributed throughout the planet, that the U.S. population is around 300 million, that the global population is 6.7 billion, and that 1/5,000 people are the top candidates to push U.S. innovation forward, that gives us a pool of 60,000 people in the U.S. and 1.28 million outside of it.

Innovation will not be spurred solely by giving those 60,000 Americans access to math or science education, but by providing the right incentives for them to enter the scientific and technical professions. More importantly, we could radically increase the number of innovation candidates through targeted immigration of the 1.28 million people that hail from elsewhere.

The government cannot mandate desire

If the first benefit of immigration is importing talent, the second is that of importing “hunger.” Many countries lack a way to identify and reward their brightest citizens, while that has been the allure of the U.S. since our inception. So I would argue further that the “innovation probability” of a high I.Q. individual whose family has been in the U.S. for many generations is less than that of someone who’s new to our nation and has a comparable intellect, but far more desire.

The time for a strategic approach to immigration is now

Broad-based mathematics education will strengthen our nation by improving our workforce, but that is not best path to innovation. Basic research may create jobs and openings at universities to lay the foundation for innovation in certain areas, but the ROI on such investments is uncertain and sometimes misplaced. And the pool of available venture capital is not the constraining factor in new startups — lack of talent is.

It’s time for a more strategic and aggressive immigration policy, one that targets the best and brightest around the globe and makes it easy for them to become permanent residents. We should be recruiting the world’s best talent the same way top companies recruit the best talent. Talk to anyone who’s tried to become a resident here lately and you’ll quickly realize the process is long and often highly random — in other words, very discouraging.

Strategic immigration, together with our strong democracy, capitalistic system and melting-pot culture, will deliver a better standard of living for many generations of Americans to come. I am grateful to all of the immigrants in the U.S. on this Fourth of July. To them, I say thank you — for everything you do.

Mike Speiser is a Managing Director at Sutter Hill Ventures.

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