The Trump administration is being sued again over another delay and likely reversal of an Obama rule. This one would encourage foreign entrepreneurs to build businesses in the US. The initiative is appropriately entitled the International Entrepreneur Rule. It was designed to give foreign entrepreneurs who don't qualify for existing visa programs the opportunity to stay in the US temporarily
to grow their startups. The National Venture Capital Association has sued the Trump administration over its decision to delay the rule until at least March fifteen and likely eliminated joining US is Andrew Harris, Bloomberg News legal reporter Andrew the initiative had broad support in the tech industry. Tell us a little more about it, well, June, I think you summed it up pretty well. The idea was that if there's going to be a startup tech business in the world,
why not have it here. So the Obama administration had set up a rule that went into effect or at least hit the books right for President o Bottom left office in January that would have allowed foreign entrepreneurs who had sufficient backing a quarter of a million dollars in venture capital or a hundred thousand dollars in government grants to come here for a renewable thirty months term called parole, during which time they could stay and grow their businesses.
And the Trump administration, just days before it was to officially take effect in July, said we're going to punt it into next year with an eye toward rescinding it. Andrew, what is the Trump administration's rationale for rescinding this rule?
You know, that's a really good question. The official explanation was that back in January, the President issued an executive order, not the immigration order that we know, but two days before that, and order addressed to securing the nation's borders and enforcing laws where it comes to this non resident status called parole. And at least that was a sidded reason for reconsidering the Obama administration's initiative here. And what's the lawsuit based on, Well, the lawsuit is based on
the notion that they just dropped in July. They dropped this delay without any prior public notice or consultation, uh and said that they're doing it with an eye tour taking public comment about killing the rule. And the National Venture Capital Association says, hey, you can't know, effectively kill it without getting public comment. First, Andrew, this notion of parole is a little different than some of the other immigration issues we've been talking about with refugees and um
and you know, the DOCU program. What what exactly does parole mean in terms of the status that these entrepreneurs would get if the rule had does go into effect, well did go into effect, these bar and entrepreneurs would be able to stay here for thirty months, renewable to up to sixty amounts or five years under certain circumstances. They could even have families here during that time, during
which they could develop their businesses. It's not a path to residency or citizenship, but it was a way to make it feasible for them to see the idea through whatever it was. And there a lot of Trump's reversals of Obama era rules seem to be bumping up against the Administrative Procedure Act. Have any of the courts ruled on that yet, Well, there have been prior rulings, particularly with respect to one environmental rule, where the courts said, hey,
you can't just do this arbitrarily. The thing with the Administrative Procedure Act is rules and regulations that could add it to the books have to have notice in comment through it after their first announced and then ostensibly the final rule is supposed to reflect that process. Now, if you want to take something off the books, you have to follow the same process, basically in reverse. You have to retrace your steps. So something that shortcuts that process
is sometimes frowned upon by the courts. Well, Andrew, when you have the National Venture Capital Association suing, presumably they have some money to actually litigate this. Well, how strong a case is there against what the Trump administration did here? Well, you think they'd have money or at least they know where to get it, right. Um, I think they have a reasonably good case because what the court, what the administration functionally did here was killed this thing before it
took effect. And it's a little bit of a puzzlement because you have Trump, the pro business president versus Trump the anti administration, anti immigration president. Uh And this is a policy that would have seemed to have straddled vote camps and it looks like the anti immigration mindset one out Andrew in the plaintiffs are some of the plaintiffs are actually entrepreneurs who were here and had to move to a different country to set to set up there
keep up their business. Tell me about one of them. Uh, they were a pair of Indian brothers who were trying to set up something similar to pay Pal. It was a way to uh do electronic credit card processing, particularly for recurrent payments. And they had set up a corporation in Delaware and they were all set to go here, except now they're not. And there's also someone who went to who had to go to Canada. So there are just waiting to see what happens with this lawsuit at
this point. Yes, the guys that we have is eventually the nbc AS attorneys are going to file for injunctive relief to um prevent this indefinite delay or or delay followed by execution from going forward. All right, well, we will keep into into touch with you so you can keep us in tune and what's going on with this rule which has attracted a lot of attention. That's Andrew Harris. He's a Bloomberg News legal reporter.