Silicon Valley has been vocal in its support for a Canadian-like startup visa, though thus far, the industry’s efforts have gained little traction on Capitol Hill.

The reform movement first picked up steam with the StartUp Visa Act of 2011, a bipartisan bill that, in light of Canada’s approach, now seems tame by comparison. The proposed legislation offered visas to foreign entrepreneurs with at least $100,000 in venture funding, and required holders to have created at least five American jobs and $500,000 in revenue after two years. Despite garnering support from both sides of the aisle, the bill never made it out of Congressional committees. The STEM Jobs Act and IDEA Act outlined similarly expansive measures for highly-skilled foreign workers, including an increase in green cards for math and science graduates, but neither were ever brought to a vote.

Congressional gridlock over federal spending and election year jockeying undoubtedly played a role in the StartUp Visa Act’s demise, but so too did lingering doubts on both sides of the aisle. Left-leaning labor unions have long worried that visa reform would threaten American jobs, while some on the right, including Rep. Lamar Smith (R - TX), feared that a startup visa program would give the government too much power in deciding Silicon Valley’s winners and losers.

"How is the government to determine which economic vision is feasible and which is pie in the sky?" Smith said during a 2011 hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, of which he was chair at the time. "How will it root out schemes proposed simply to procure a visa?"

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a Washington, DC-based nonprofit that favors curbing immigration, has been among the most outspoken critics of startup visa proposals, which it sees as an unnecessary addition to an already bloated system.

"We're not dealing with refugees. We're dealing with the best and the brightest."

"We're not dealing with refugees," CIS Fellow David North told The Verge. "We’re not dealing with crippled old folks or disabled children. We’re dealing with the best and the brightest. This is a very privileged class, and we have lots of ways that people like that can come to the States and set up their companies."

North acknowledges that the alphabet soup of current immigration laws can be difficult to decipher, but insists that it just takes a little time and "creative" thinking. Besides, he argued, it’s not as if Silicon Valley is in a state of decay.

"We’ve certainly managed to have an enormously successful tech sector without an entrepreneur visa."

But the sentiment is quite different among the Valley’s most visible leaders and investors. Startup visa proponents such as venture capitalist Fred Wilson have argued that foreign entrepreneurs, almost by definition, would only create more jobs for American workers — a stance that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and others have publicly echoed.

"It's the single stupidest policy the US government has around high-tech immigration," Google chairman Eric Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal in November. "These people will create billions of dollars in investment in the economy and provide us with the ability to be world class in every industry."