When Donald Trump was elected US president, Deniz Ergürel was nervous.
“I’m from Turkey — it’s a Muslim majority country and so I didn’t know how the new administration would treat us,” says Mr Ergürel, who founded US-based virtual reality media start-up Haptical in 2016. He spent the past six months wondering if he will be able to transition from the tourist visa that allows him to do little more than hold business meetings in Silicon Valley to a more permanent situation that would allow him to raise money and Haptical to grow.
Five months into the presidency of Mr Trump — who ran on an anti-immigration, “America First” platform — it is a question that many immigrant entrepreneurs, along with the angel investors who fund them, are asking. US immigration processes have always been bureaucratic and complicated, but Mr Trump has promised crackdowns on legal and illegal immigration that will inject added uncertainty and stress.