Justiguide Wants To Use Ai To Help People Navigate The U.s. Immigration System 

The U.S. migration strategy is complex, difficult to navigate, and costly for immigrants. The startup JustiGuide claims it tin thief pinch that acknowledgment to an AI-powered portal.

The thought is to assistance immigrants successful nan U.S. — and yet successful different countries — understand nan law, what visas they whitethorn beryllium eligible for and to link pinch migration attorneys, making nan full process cheaper and faster. 

“I deliberation nan much we make nan exertion accessible, I deliberation group will beryllium empowered to effort and capable their ain forms and understand what their options are and that they will beryllium capable to usage lawyers for conscionable nan reappraisal process,” JustiGuide’s laminitis Bisi Obateru told TechCrunch.

Obateru, who is from Nigeria, recalled really he had to navigate nan U.S. migration strategy aft he vanished his studies successful nan country. Since then, he sewage an H1-B visa, a communal visa for tech workers, and past a imperishable residency greenish card. 

That inspired him to motorboat JustiGuide to thief chap immigrants. “Immigrants tin travel successful and fundamentally speak successful their autochthonal lingua and understand what their migration travel tin be,” he said. 

The institution won champion pitch successful nan Policy + Protection class astatine TechCrunch’s Disrupt convention this year. 

JustiGuide’s customers, according to Obateru, are startup founders who request thief hiring immigrants, individuals who person an H1-B and are looking for different options, world students reasoning of starting their ain business, arsenic good arsenic lawyers and rule firms. But he besides hopes that 1 time possibly authorities institutions will besides want to licence nan technology.

The level consists of an AI ineligible investigation assistant, a strategy that pairs lawyers and immigrants, and it promises to velocity up nan filling of forms. The second is done by giving lawyers a work that helps them compile documents and streamline processes that a paralegal whitethorn different do, Obateru explained. 

According to Obateru, nan platform, which has 47,000 users, relies connected an AI he called Dolores, “a continuous refining domain-specific AI that understands U.S. immigration,” arsenic he put it. Dolores besides does translations to 12 languages. 

Dolores was trained connected complete 40,000 tribunal cases, which JustiGuide originated from nan Free Law Project, a non profit that provides free entree to ineligible materials, according to Obateru. The startup is besides successful nan process of registering arsenic a rule patient truthful it tin straight link its users and customers pinch its ain migration lawyers, he said.

At nan beginning, JustiGuide programmed Dolores to — based connected keywords — spell astir and scan subreddits, Facebook groups, Instagram and LinkedIn posts, looking for immigrants who needed help, and messaged them pinch answers, according to Obateru. 

To protect immigrants’ privacy, JustiGuide’s level is stored on-prem and encrypted, and only erstwhile an migrant connects to a lawyer is nan accusation exchanged. Some personification accusation is besides anonymized, said Obateru.