'Fastest, Cheapest, Most Reliable': How Three Immigrants Are Using AI To Change Immigration Bureaucracy

Visa requests tend to be a tedious and expensive process, encompassing long communication with lawyers, several bureaucratic steps and confusing options. But as different industries embrace the new era of artificial intelligence, a new startup is looking to cut time and costs down to help aspiring migrants apply for visas more efficiently.

Gale is a startup that uses AI to streamline the U.S. visa application process for employers and workers, and has so far raised $2.7 million in seed funding. Its three co-founders, all immigrants— Rahul Gudise, Rishabh Sambare, and Haokun Qin— came up with the concept after dealing with their own confusing, and at times infuriating, visa processes.

Gudise, a software engineer from Canada who initially came to the U.S. to intern for Tesla and Nvidia, told The Latin Times that he realized the need for a more efficient visa request system after going his own application process, which he described as "non-transparent" and "tedious."

"I couldn't help but wonder, 'do [law firms] do everything up to par with what is required with no errors?' Because there's a huge focus on compliance for legal immigration. And so we thought we could do a better job faster with automation and AI," Gudise said.

The founders clarified that Gale is not a direct substitution for a law firm or for legal advice. Instead, Gale is a tool that helps migrants automate the administrative work during the visa application process. In other words, instead of manually filling out lengthy forms, users can upload their documents, passport and other needed information, and Gale will fill out the necessary immigration forms for them. A licensed immigration lawyer will then conduct a final review before submission.

But accuracy and speed are not the only key characteristics that define Gale. So is compliance, the three co-founders told The Latin Times. They explained that most law firms hand off the process once the visa is approved, leaving employers to handle ongoing requirements on their own. Instead, Gale is building out its platform to monitor changes like job titles or promotions that might impact a worker's visa status, while also developing integrations with company HR systems to help employers stay compliant as requirements change.

"At the end of the day, we want to promote legal immigration to the States and help employers stay compliant. This is the way to do it sustainably," Gudise told Business Insider in a recent interview.

Gale is ramping up operations at a time when the Trump administration is ramping up its anti-immigration rhetoric, not only enacting mass deportations across the country but also reducing pathways for legal immigration. At the same time, artificial intelligence is increasingly being embraced across industries, from healthcare, to education, law and beyond. Gudise, Sambare and Qin understand that, and as a result, they have seen an increase in smaller businesses requesting their services to lower their costs.

"It's really interesting because we have a lot of companies coming to us specifically [due to recent immigration policies]," Qin said. "If you're a smaller scale startup, you don't have the resources to hire one of the biggest law firms in the world for that white glove compliance service. It's not even hard. It's expensive."

"So, we have a lot of companies, small, medium, and some large scale who are really interested in what we're building because, yes, we get the visas done faster, and cheaper in a lot of cases. But we also automate that compliance work," he added.

The platform is currently operating with H-1B visa, a temporary work visa that allows U.S. employers to hire foreign workers in specialized occupations that require a bachelor's degree or higher, or its equivalent, as well as TN, J-1, L-1, EB-2 and EB-3 visas. However, Gudise and his partners' plans are to eventually grow into incorporating more visa processes and perhaps even more complicated legal services.

"Our main goal is going to be immigration for the next while. I strongly believe that a makeover is due for a lot of different flat fee legal professions," Sambare said. "But I think in the next five years, we'll probably be super focused on immigration, building the fastest, cheapest, most reliable immigration platform.

"What we're going to be building for the next while is that way to kind of be that reliable, trusted partner in immigration, [a platform], which will essentially hold your hand through all of the complicated parts," he concluded.