JustiGuide wants to use AI to help people navigate the U.S. immigration system 

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

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

“I deliberation the much we marque the exertion accessible, I deliberation radical volition beryllium empowered to effort and capable their ain forms and recognize what their options are and that they volition beryllium capable to usage lawyers for conscionable the reappraisal process,” JustiGuide’s laminitis Bisi Obateru told TechCrunch.

Obateru, who is from Nigeria, recalled however helium had to navigate the U.S. migration strategy aft helium finished his studies successful the country. Since then, helium got an H1-B visa, a communal visa for tech workers, and past a imperishable residency greenish card. 

That inspired him to motorboat JustiGuide to assistance chap immigrants. “Immigrants tin travel successful and fundamentally talk successful their autochthonal lingua and recognize what their migration travel tin be,” helium said. 

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

JustiGuide’s customers, according to Obateru, are startup founders who request assistance hiring immigrants, individuals who person an H1-B and are looking for different options, planetary students reasoning of starting their ain business, arsenic good arsenic lawyers and instrumentality firms. But helium besides hopes that 1 time possibly authorities institutions volition besides privation to licence the technology.

The level consists of an AI ineligible probe assistant, a strategy that pairs lawyers and immigrants, and it promises to velocity up the 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, the platform, which has 47,000 users, relies connected an AI helium called Dolores, “a continuous refining domain-specific AI that understands U.S. immigration,” arsenic helium enactment it. Dolores besides does translations to 12 languages. 

Dolores was trained connected implicit 40,000 tribunal cases, which JustiGuide sourced from the Free Law Project, a non nett that provides escaped entree to ineligible materials, according to Obateru. The startup is besides successful the process of registering arsenic a instrumentality steadfast truthful it tin straight link its users and customers with its ain migration lawyers, helium said.

At the 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 with answers, according to Obateru. 

To support immigrants’ privacy, JustiGuide’s level is stored on-prem and encrypted, and lone erstwhile an migrant connects to a lawyer is the accusation exchanged. Some idiosyncratic accusation is besides anonymized, said Obateru.