It’s not been a good week on the immigration front.
This can be said for the topic nearly every week, these past 10 days have been particularly grim.
You can almost see Steve Miller’s smile when it was announced that under a rule proposed last week by the Department of Homeland Security, a previous immigrate, even now a citizen, could be deported. If they have a history of relying on government money or programs for any reason, they can be recalled for deportation. That’s right, let’s say a 22-year-old Vietnamese student was once on food stamps while finishing a college education. Today, now a successful 52-year-old engineer at Boeing, could be sent back to Hanoi. While a program such as this has been in place for years, Trump is proposing expanding the scope.
Next came the news that the GOP has all but dropped its victorious 2017 tax breaks as a discussion point from its midterm platform. Replacing it? Immigration-related issues. Since the tax break did little to move the needle in a positive direction for the Republicans, they’re filling the void with immigration reform and building on the perceived momentum of tightening our borders as a key message. This will certainly further rally the base and keep immigration front and center through November.
Though not as assured, the snickering and sniggering at Trump during his remarks at last week’s UN General Assembly gave him fodder for lashing out. As we all know, Trump despises nothing more than being ridiculed, especially when it manifests itself in laughter at his expense. We will certainly pay for the global guffawing. Trump and his anti-immigrate cronies will likely turn this perceived slight into a way to further tighten our borders, lest someone get in who may share a laugh at The Donald’s expense.
Add these three fresh incidents to the administration’s ongoing anti-immigrant antics and things are looking rather grim indeed.
It’s actually ironic that the President’s attempts to reduce immigration comes at a time when the country needs more and younger labor force to support (via taxes) a growing number of longer-living retirees. According to Pew Research Center projections, as the Baby Boom generation heads into retirement, “the most important component of the growth in the working-age population over the next two decades will be the arrival of future immigrants.” In the tech industry alone, studies have predicted that there will be an estimated 1.4 million open computing jobs by 2020, but only 400,000 US trained computer science graduates with the skills to fill them.
PassRight is ready for changes
With the situation looking so bleak, it’s critical to have companies like Bay Area PassRight, working pro-actively on keeping our proverbial borders open via alternatives to Trump’s attempts to close them. PassRight is attempting to disrupt the notoriously difficult and ever-shifting landscape of job migration: PassRight, a company providing software as a service (SaaS) and related technical support to law firms focusing on immigration issues. For someone thinking about working with you through this platform, how can they best prepare before they start this process?
Specifically, the two founders, Liran Rosenfield and Gal Talmor, fully understand the frustrations, delays, and personal and financial costs all too well. Rosenfeld’s own experience inspired him to be a founding partner and CEO of PassRight.
When Rosenfeld came to the U.S. in 2016, he had a few choices available to him to stay and work. He needed to get married or go to school because he didn’t qualify for other types of visas. Or so he thought. He visited one attorney after the next, all of whom told him different things and presented hugely different cost equations for keeping him here. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services process is complex, as are the ways to navigate it.
One attorney advised Rosenfeld to go directly for a Green Card. $15,000 and many months later, it appeared his visa, despite guarantees in writing from his attorney, was not going to be approved. Coasting on the last few months of a tourist visa, now with a complete distrust of the immigration attorneys he’d spoken to, Rosenfeld dug in, worked on his EB1 visa by himself and paid another attorney to submit the paperwork.
PassRight creates a path for other entrepreneurs and enterprising tech workers
Two things make the immigration system confusing, inefficient and costly.
The Process: For the most part, the process is not digitized. Manual forms and paperwork, letters of reference and copies of documentation must be compiled to complete an immigration filing.
The second challenge, and this is where experienced attorneys come into play, securing an 01 visa requires a strategy. The applicant must prove they qualify and meet specific legal criteria.
The PassRight team has developed AI that helps project the applicant’s likelihood of success based on the content in the application. There is a chat feature inside the software that connects the person with immigration attorneys at partner McGettrick Law PLLC, to help answer accurately and on strategy.
What’s the benefit of this automated system? Rather than operating without a rudder, at the mercy of the system, the individual can complete 80% of the process by themselves and avoid the 100 to 500 emails it ordinarily takes to extract the proper information. This can streamline the process down from 3 to 6-months to a 15-day process. In a few cases, PassRight has completed the process in 5 days.
The visa system is ripe for innovation
The immigration system provides many opportunities for innovation because there are 37 types of visas people consider when coming to America.
PassRight is at also at work at streamlining the next path of entry for many. These paths include the marriage-based Green Card, the B1 and B2 Visa extensions, the Green Card Renewal and the Citizenship application as well as more complicated applications like E-2 Investors visa, EB-1 and EB-2 Green Cards as well as L-1 executive transfers etc..
As we saw this past week, the immigration issues aren’t going away anytime soon, nor are politicians inclined to streamline the system.
That’s why people like Liran Rosenfeld and his company PassRight, are so important. Doing things right and better has always—and will always—be fertile ground for entrepreneurs.
