Immigration is essential to American progress. Immigrants have founded iconic companies, led breakthroughs in AI and science, and filled critical roles across education, agriculture, healthcare, and manufacturing. Enabling talent flows to the U.S. is, therefore, central to the American economy and society.

But for the individuals trying to build a life here, and the companies trying to hire them, the immigration process remains broken. It’s slow, confusing, expensive, and high-stakes. A single missing document or delay can derail someone’s life - or a company’s hiring plan.

We know this because our own team members have lived through this journey: filling out endless amounts of repetitive paperwork, running around trying to get a credit card without a FICO score, ensuring we stay compliant with our visas at every step of the way, etc. We also heard it again and again in our conversations over the past year - with immigrants, with legal teams, with HR leaders across industries: immigration is a broken system.

But it’s also a structured one. The rules are defined. The workflows are repeatable. The bottlenecks are known. That makes it fixable, with the right tools.

Unlike past efforts which have only digitized existing processes, AI now gives us the ability to make immigration faster, more accurate, and more accessible at scale. Not by patching old workflows, but by rearchitecting the system.

It’s time immigration worked for the people it’s meant to serve.

Immigration is infrastructure - and it’s running on Microsoft Word & Outlook

There are more than 48 million immigrants in the U.S., and millions more arrive on temporary visas each year. But the system they rely on is outdated. 

As we delved into the immigration workflows, we found that lawyers and paralegals spend most of their time chasing documents over email, trying to match CVs to requirements, copy-pasting information into templates, and looking for mistakes. What they wished they could do more of -- advising clients on important strategic considerations -- is only a fraction of their day-to-day job.

The manual nature of the work is compounded by the market structure: there are 17,000 immigration law firms in the U.S., a massively fragmented space. Most operate like bespoke service shops and specialize in just a few visa types. They have no modern tech stack, no strong brand, and no scalable customer experience.  

Even the largest firms, like Fragomen or BAL, depend on thousands of offshore paralegals processing filings with minimal automation. They generally provide rote services but, as many mobility managers told us, deliver subpar services.

AI makes immigration programmable

Immigration law is complex, but it’s not (usually) ambiguous. Most filings follow fixed rules, defined processes, and structured requirements. Today, attorneys and paralegals spend their time collecting documents, drafting on top of templates, and confirming compliance.

These are exactly the kinds of workflows AI is now capable of accelerating.

• Agents can automate document intake, flag missing information, and monitor filing timelines.
• LLMs can draft petitions like O-1, EB-1, and H-1B petitions in minutes, not weeks.
• RAG systems can search regulatory guidance, case law, and internal templates to assist in edge cases.
• Human-in-the-loop workflows ensure review and quality while drastically improving efficiency.

We’ve seen startups reducing ~40 hours of legal work to <10 minutes of assisted review. We’ve seen lean teams supporting hundreds of filings while maintaining the accuracy and service quality that top talent expects. 

But the real shift will come from when we turn reactive casework into a proactive immigration system that enables and nudges the best talent to deepen their roots in the U.S. This means, on the front end, providing recruiters with assessments of a candidate’s visa options before they extend an offer so more companies realize they actually can hire foreigners. On the back end, HR teams want systems that proactively help employees stay in the country without any hiccups or last minute firedrills to renew a visa. We know all of this and more is possible with AI.

Two approaches to fixing immigration

Most of the startups today fall into one of two categories.

Model 1: Selling tools to law firms
A number of companies have taken this route - offering drafting copilots, research assistants, intake automation, and more. Many of these products have solid demos and early adopters. But we think adoption at scale will inherently be inefficient. Law firms vary widely in their processes, have limited technical resources, are risk-averse, and face high switching costs. More importantly, in a world where distribution is king, fragmentation and low ACVs makes it difficult to build momentum at scale.

Model 2: Owning the full stack
A smaller but fast-growing group of startups is choosing to provide legal immigration services themselves. These players are vertically integrated: they combine licensed legal services, AI-driven workflows, and full accountability for outcomes. They serve consumers and businesses directly and own the customer experience from start to finish.  We believe this second model is better positioned to win.

By owning the service layer, these companies can control quality, compound data, build trust, and move faster. They aren’t waiting for law firms to modernize; they’re building a better alternative from the ground up.

We expect that the category winner may use a B2C model to gain a foothold, but actually stand out by dominating the B2B space. This requires meeting strict SLAs (24 hour response times, providing advisory services, helping employees that need to be relocated abroad temporarily), building enterprise-grade products, and creative strategies to acquire not only fast growing startups but also established companies as customers.

The types of teams we want to back

We’re most excited about companies that go beyond digitizing the status quo and reimagine immigration from first principles.

We’re looking for:

• AI-native, full-stack companies that obsess over metrics and the levers to automate the process end-to-end
• Founders with deep user empathy and grand ambition, usually immigrants that know the stakes and obsess over every case, but also understand the urgency to move fast and go big
• Teams that have shown they can scale across categories, from O-1s and H-1Bs to agricultural and seasonal visas, green cards, and cross-border moves
• Enterprise-grade capabilities, including meeting strict SLAs, integrations with HR systems, etc.

We also believe the most durable companies in this space won’t stop at immigration. They’ll build platforms that support how people move across borders and how companies support them: document vaults, compliance engines, relocation services, and even financial tools like taxes.

Immigration is the wedge. Global mobility is the ultimate platform.

The path forward

Immigration has always been a bet on people. But the systems behind it haven’t kept up. They’ve added friction and cost, not clarity and care. We know it’s possible to change that.

We believe the best companies in this space will build software that feels like infrastructure - intelligent, automated, and always on. They’ll reduce timelines and stress. They’ll increase trust. And they’ll open doors for the talent that powers everything from frontline industries to frontier science.

If you’re building this future or need help with your immigration situation, drop us a note. And if you are building digital infrastructure to make B2B2G processes easier, we’re eager to talk.