Ignoring the fancy drawings, this is not necessarily such an outlandish project. The main idea is buying a surplus cruise ship and transforming it into office space for highly paid workers who can get a tourist visa but not a work visa for the US. Simply the work certification costs and the delays involved in obtaining H1Bs for all those people would probably offset a good deal of the cruise ship's price. The workers can conduct activities they are not directly paid for (presentations, informal meetings) on shore in the Valley, and commute to do all their programming/other directly paid jobs on board.
Unfortunately, it will not work, because the first politician who will see a potential for voter outrage about this will exploit it to bring the whole thing down, either by causing the shut down of the ship-to-shore infrastructure, by digging up / stretching some obscure tenets of immigration law to penalize the workers, or simply by having the Coast Guard overstep its attributions and seize the entire operation (which is usually how micronations end). The project is thus doomed without some high-grade political support, and no sane US politician will offer any.
Can you explain who exactly are these "highly paid workers who can get a tourist visa but not a work visa for the US"? If by "highly paid" you mean on the same level of typical US software engineer in CA, say $90K-$100K (and that's not highly paid in the valley) they I don't see how Blueseed can make money.
My question is: what is the value proposition of having a ship in international waters (you only consider the cost of buying the ship, but operating and maintaining it as well as insurance and health concerns would be huge expenses) other than having cheap (or, if you want, cheap-er) labor?
You are also assuming the workers can go to the Valley on a whim on tourist visas. For most internationals, e.g. Chinese and Indian, with single entry visas this is not possible.
So we've seen the ship loophole for things like gambling before, and that's basically institutionalized. I think the truth is that immigration is too politically charged to go through legislature change - instead it's conceivable that, like Marijuana in decriminalized areas, that politicians are fine with it as long as it doesn't cause too much of a fuss. Just my two cents.
To add to the list of potential hinderances, the onshore customs office that could easily be set up to harass workers going to/from this "different country".
... and do tourist or other non-work visas allow unlimited exit/re-entry?
Comments
Ignoring the fancy drawings, this is not necessarily such an outlandish project. The main idea is buying a surplus cruise ship and transforming it into office space for highly paid workers who can get a tourist visa but not a work visa for the US. Simply the work certification costs and the delays involved in obtaining H1Bs for all those people would probably offset a good deal of the cruise ship's price. The workers can conduct activities they are not directly paid for (presentations, informal meetings) on shore in the Valley, and commute to do all their programming/other directly paid jobs on board.
Unfortunately, it will not work, because the first politician who will see a potential for voter outrage about this will exploit it to bring the whole thing down, either by causing the shut down of the ship-to-shore infrastructure, by digging up / stretching some obscure tenets of immigration law to penalize the workers, or simply by having the Coast Guard overstep its attributions and seize the entire operation (which is usually how micronations end). The project is thus doomed without some high-grade political support, and no sane US politician will offer any.
Can you explain who exactly are these "highly paid workers who can get a tourist visa but not a work visa for the US"? If by "highly paid" you mean on the same level of typical US software engineer in CA, say $90K-$100K (and that's not highly paid in the valley) they I don't see how Blueseed can make money.
My question is: what is the value proposition of having a ship in international waters (you only consider the cost of buying the ship, but operating and maintaining it as well as insurance and health concerns would be huge expenses) other than having cheap (or, if you want, cheap-er) labor?
You are also assuming the workers can go to the Valley on a whim on tourist visas. For most internationals, e.g. Chinese and Indian, with single entry visas this is not possible.
So we've seen the ship loophole for things like gambling before, and that's basically institutionalized. I think the truth is that immigration is too politically charged to go through legislature change - instead it's conceivable that, like Marijuana in decriminalized areas, that politicians are fine with it as long as it doesn't cause too much of a fuss. Just my two cents.
Gambling and marijuana have constituencies, foreign engineers who can't get a work visa don't.
But the companies who what those workers do.
To add to the list of potential hinderances, the onshore customs office that could easily be set up to harass workers going to/from this "different country".
... and do tourist or other non-work visas allow unlimited exit/re-entry?