As President Trump has cracked down on all kinds of immigration, tech workers and students have been caught in the crosshairs. In a bid to curb use of the H-1B visa—a program that allows employers to hire skilled talent from abroad and is widely used across the tech industry—Trump imposed a whopping $100,000 fee on new applications last year. 

The steep cost of hiring H-1B workers has already had an impact on tech companies and other employers that have come to rely on the visa, leaving many students and aspiring H-1B workers with few options to remain in the country. Some employers have been forced to reevaluate their hiring strategy and have opted to sit out the H-1B lottery this year. For small companies, the fee has made an already challenging, expensive process virtually impossible to navigate. 

Amid this political climate, the immigration law firm Ellis wants to simplify work visa applications for companies—and workers—through a tech-enabled platform that uses AI to automate parts of the process, which remains complex and largely paper-based.........

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