Probably true when you look 4-5 years into the future and some of these seed companies start growing out into real, profitable, sustainable businesses.

Can you point to an example where a politician has received unequivocal credit or blame for something he or she did 4-5 years ago? It often seems that the look-back period is only about two weeks. The enormous cost of Sarbanes-Oxley to US competitiveness doesn't seem to have adversely impacted the careers of Sarbanes, Oxley, or the numerous other legislators who voted to enact the regulation.

The funny things is polititions who try to take credit for truly inovative ideas get laughed at: "Creating the Internet." But, those who find creative ways to waste money in their district can gain long term support.

Stranger still is the ability for politicians to take credit for bad / poorly implemented ideas that sound good: "No child left behind."

Surely it's more an example of Rule #1.

A risk might be that if even one Al Qaeda terrorist gets in under this program, then the whole program will be shut down, and the sponsoring member of Congress's name will be infamous forever after.

Good VCs vet potential investees better than the FBI does. And that is true without the risk of being blamed for enabling a terrorist. Think about how well a VC would vet someone coming in from outside the country. (How well they can vet such a person is a separate but important issue).

And at least one of the 9/11 hijackers came in on a student visa. The student visa program has not been shut down (although checks for all visa programs have become more stringent).

There would probably have to be some monitoring that visa recipients are actually engaging in start-up activities; in which case there shouldn't be time for any terrorism...