A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
International students are facing extra scrutiny as they go through the visa process. A suspension of visa applications and interviews for students was lifted last month, but now the State Department is requiring students make all their social media history public. If students are discouraged from studying here, what might they and the United States miss out on? We decided to call one former international student to find out. Jason Gui is the founder of Vigo Technologies, a wearable tech company based in San Francisco.
JASON GUI: I was born in Shenzhen, China. Shenzhen is kind of known as the manufacturing capital of the world, where, like, iPhones and stuff are made. So I moved to New Zealand when I was a little kid and grew up in New Zealand most of my life. I started doing, like, startups in high school, but I felt that I wanted to go even deeper, so I decided to apply for colleges in the U.S. I studied at the University of Pennsylvania, and I did mechanical engineering at business at the Wharton School. In my college years, I started working on the smart glasses initially to help students stay awake in class.
MARTÍNEZ: (Laughter).
GUI: This was, like, 2012, and so I've been doing it since then.
MARTÍNEZ: So what made you say, OK, I want to go study in the United States?
GUI: So actually, I applied for colleges across four different countries. But the reason why I chose the U.S. was mostly because I knew that I wanted to be a tech entrepreneur, and I felt like coming to the U.S., there would be a lot more opportunities to really build a startup and really grow from it. In the U.S., I could study what I wanted. I could do internships during summer. I could do a startup while I was in school. I could meet investors who were, like, enthusiastic about what I was doing and able to support, like, me doing a startup even in college. And I don't think that's possible in the other countries I've lived in. I've lived in New Zealand. I've lived in Australia. I've lived in China. And, you know, none of those opportunities really allow me to do that there.
MARTÍNEZ: What do you think the United States gained the most from having you study here?
GUI: Well, I think when the U.S. is welcoming to these international students, you really bring the best and brightest talent to the U.S. and these minds clash together to create more ideas. I created a few startups, and my co-founders from those other startups also grew on to be successful startup founders who really did a lot of things. The other part to that I think is also because we were educated in the U.S., we would tend to feel more positively about the U.S., and so I think by coming to the U.S. as an international student, you really learn a lot more about how the world works and how the U.S. works and why the U.S. is such a powerful country.
MARTÍNEZ: So when you finished up at Penn and at Wharton, how successful did your companies turn out?
GUI: Yeah. So in 2016, we had the idea of building this pair of glasses that could actually, instead of doing drowsiness detection, we could focus on things like bone conduction audio and being able to converse with voice assistants and listen to music and take calls. So we put this idea onto Kickstarter, and it became an instant success. We raised $2 million within 45 days. We were covered by, like, Forbes and Business Insider, and all these major outlets who were really surprised to see a small startup actually build something that Google Glass actually failed at, which was popularizing smart glasses. And then this year, we started working on a new product called Captify, which is smart glasses for the deaf and hard of hearing. Basically, we're building these glasses that can complement hearing aids by picking up what people are saying to you and transcribing that into text in real time.
MARTÍNEZ: How do you feel about the restrictions that have been put on international students in the U.S.?
GUI: Well, I think it's really shortsighted because a lot of people who come to the U.S., they want to stay. They want to get a job, or they want to create jobs. They want to start a company like I did. And because we're turning them away, like, these people, they're still going to end up somewhere, right? So they would go to some other country. Maybe it's the U.K., maybe if they're Chinese, maybe they stay in China. And so all of that talent is actually moving away from the U.S. to other countries, which is probably not what the U.S. wants, ultimately.
MARTÍNEZ: Jason Gui is the founder of Vigo Technologies, a wearable tech company. Jason, thanks for sharing your story with us.
GUI: Thank you so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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