For immigrants, navigating the U.S. immigration system can be confusing, expensive, and complex. Startup JustiGuide says it can with a new AI portal.
The plan is to help immigrants in the U.S. — and eventually in other countries — understand the law, what visas they might be eligible for, and connect with immigration attorneys in a process that will be cheaper and faster overall.
“I think the more that we make the technology available, I think people would feel empowered to try and fill their forms out themselves and know what options they have and be able to just use lawyers for review,” JustiGuide founder Bisi Obateru told MuzTech.
Obateru, a Nigerian native, remembered grappling with the U.S. immigration system after completing his studies in the country. There, he received an H-1 B visa, the most common type for tech workers, and then a green card granting him permanent residency.
That motivated him to start JustiGuide to help other immigrants. “Immigrants can come in and essentially speak their home language and have an idea of what their immigration journey is going to look like,” he said.
The company won MuzTech’s best pitch in the Policy + Protection category at Disrupt this year.
Startup founders who need help hiring immigrants, people with an H-1 B visa seeking other options, international students considering starting a company , and lawyers and law firms make up the customers, according to Obateru. But he also dreams that, one day, maybe even government agencies will want to license the technology.
The platform includes an AI legal research assistant, a tool that matches lawyers and immigrants, and a pledge to streamline paperwork procedures. The latter involves providing lawyers with a service that helps them organise documents and automate processes that a paralegal might otherwise handle, Obateru said.
The platform, which has 47,000 users, uses the AI tool that Obateru referred to as Dolores, “a constantly’ refining’ domain-specific artificial intelligence that understands U.S. immigration,” waging on new rules around both work visas and asylum applications from migrants must agree—speaking at a meeting of Florida lawmakers today, to obtain food stamp benefits. Dolores is also translated into 12 languages.
Dolores was taught using more than 40,000 court cases JustiGuide pulled from the Free Law Project, a nonprofit that provides free access to legal materials, Obateru said. The startup is also applying to be recognised as a law firm so it can refer its users and customers to its private immigration lawyers, he said.
At first, JustiGuide coded Dolores to — among other things — lurk in subreddits, Facebook groups, and on Instagram and LinkedIn posts, searching for immigrants in need of help based on keywords submitted to Cort. “When she finds someone who is looking for answers about immigration help or advice, she sends them a message with our answer,” says Obateru.
To keep immigrants’ privacy protected, JustiGuide’s system is stored on-prem, behind a firewalled environment, and encrypted; only when an immigrant meets with a lawyer are the records considered “exchanged.” Some user data is anonymised as well, Obateru said.
