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Posted by proberts 23 hours ago

I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

I'll be here for the next 6 hours. As usual, there are lots of possible topics and I'll be guided by whatever you're interested in. Please remember that I can't provide legal advice on specific cases because I won't have access to all the facts. Please try to stick to a factual discussion in your questions and comments and I'll try to do the same in my answers!

Previous threads we've done: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=proberts.

176 points | 224 commentspage 8
kgwxd 22 hours ago|
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tempaccountabcd 21 hours ago||
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huvverl 21 hours ago||
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lucaslazarus 21 hours ago||
4chan is down the hall and to the left
4748489559 20 hours ago|||
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huvverl 21 hours ago|||
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jitler 21 hours ago||
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kitsune1 22 hours ago||
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hallole 21 hours ago||
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turtlesdown11 23 hours ago||
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dang 23 hours ago||
Please don't waste community time and space by posting unsubstantive comments.

Edit: Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait generally? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly, and we've already asked you more than once not to.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

turtlesdown11 22 hours ago||
> Please don't waste community time and space by posting unsubstantive comments.

It's a very genuine question for how an attorney deals with these businesses? There are countless examples of startups breaking the law at mass scale (Uber, etc) and getting away with it. Sorry that asking difficult questions is wasting "community space". Your own profile cites conflict as essential, is asking difficult questions not part of that?

Part of the guidelines you asked me to review is "Assume good faith." Did you assume good faith from my comment?

One of the more recent discussions here was about Medvi, which described many illegal/unethical business practices. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/02/technology/ai-billion-dol...

Other examples include Airbnb building a bot poaching listings from Craigslist, Stripe not developing appropriate internal rules to enable fraud and drug transactions, pretty much all crypto exchanges and KYC, etc.

Obviously, payment processors like Stripe do not spring into existence fully formed with mature controls. My question relates partially to how attorneys in this domain handle the risks associated with undeveloped compliance, compliance failures, as well as business models that are diametrically opposing the law.

There is an area that many startups believe is "grey" where they operate outside of legal norms, whether it's to enable growth, lack of appropriate risk controls, etc.

Here, startups may knowingly, or unknowingly break the law related to immigration in order to further their business. That's what my question relates to.

mindslight 21 hours ago||
While you'd have a point if you were asking in-house counsel at one of the companies in question, you're asking an immigration attorney who works with many different companies. The few times I've tried asking independent attorneys hypotheticals about how to break the law the least, or how to skate through min-maxing the rules the way hackers want to, I've generally gotten a pretty simple answer: "Don't".
turtlesdown11 20 hours ago||
Definitely, was interested in what's been happening since the current administration's changes to immigration policy, but you're absolutely correct.
mindslight 20 hours ago||
If you read the whole thread there are definitely some responses to specific questions about what's changed.
proberts 23 hours ago|||
We advise them to comply with all laws.
fourside 23 hours ago||
This is a very loaded question. I’m not sure what type of answer you expect to get.
threethirtytwo 10 hours ago||
What is the most evil thing you’ve done as a lawyer? What is the most evil thing you’ve done for YC?
threepts 17 hours ago|
Do you believe skilled immigration is overall detriment or increment to the American economy?