
Support ImmigrationHelp.org
Help us, help immigrants
The short version:
Immigrants make America great, but it has never been harder for them to live and work in America. That's why we created ImmigrationHelp.org (IHO) - a legal-tech nonprofit that makes immigration accessible to the millions for whom it is out of reach. Our mission is to help disadvantaged immigrants who qualify for legal status to obtain with our easy-to-use TurboTax-style tools and expert guidance. This is particularly important right now when many immigrants are not accessing essential benefits during the COVID-19 emergency due to fear and ineligibility.
We are beyond excited to help thousands of Immigrants gain the freedom to live, work, and love in this great country! If our mission inspires you, we'd love your help - please chip in what you can to help support our work. We'll use these funds to improve our technology, pay our staff, and invest in new and innovative ways to make immigration more accessible to those who need it most.
Note: ImmigrationHelp.org is a DBA of Immigrants Like Us, a pending 501(c)(3) nonprofit fiscally-sponsored by The Social Good Fund.
The long version:
Immigrants make America great, but it has never been harder for them to live and work in America. Over the past four years, changes to U.S. immigration law have made it harder than ever for low-income immigrants to obtain legal status. In 2016, the Trump Administration doubled, and in some cases tripled, the length of common immigration applications, making them vastly more complicated and mistake-prone. Rejections of immigration applications have already reached an all-time high. And under the new public charge rule, the rejection rate for family green card applications is projected to increase by up to 50%, especially for immigrants born in Latin America, Africa, and the Caribbean.
Because of these changes, immigrants now need a lawyer’s help to even know if they’re eligible for status and to prepare their application if they are eligible. But few immigrants can afford to pay an immigration lawyer $3,000 of legal fees, particularly when government fees alone are rising up to $2,750 in 2020. As a result, many low-income immigrants are unable to obtain asylum, family green cards, or citizenship. This leaves them unable to escape persecution, to work, to obtain health coverage, or to participate in our democracy. Their American Dream is out of reach. This is particularly problematic right now when many immigrants are not accessing essential benefits during the COVID-19 emergency due to fear and ineligibility.
Numerous brick-and-mortar nonprofits across the country help low-income immigrants with humanitarian applications, family Green Cards, and naturalization. These nonprofits do exceptional work, but their service model - in person, one-attorney-to-one-client - limits their service capacity to 150-300 filings per year. As a result, these nonprofits often must turn down 4 out of 5 immigrants seeking help.
That's why we created That's why we created ImmigrationHelp.org (IHO) - a legal-tech nonprofit that makes immigration accessible to the millions for whom it is out of reach. Our mission to help disadvantaged immigrants who qualify for legal status to obtain it.
Here's how it works:
1. Users find https://www.immigrationhelp.org through referrals from brick-and-mortar nonprofits or when they are searching Google for immigration information.
2. On our site, immigrants can use our immigration screener to learn what status they qualify for and their risk of denial: high, medium, or low.
3. IHO screens out difficult cases involving criminality, deportation, and past immigration issues.
4. If the user is eligible for one of the applications IHO offers (currently DACA renewals, naturalization and family green cards), they can use IHO's free “TurboTax-style” application to prepare the required forms and supporting documents.
5. For immigrants earning under their state’s median income or seeking humanitarian relief, we provide a free expert review of the completed application and support throughout the application process.
By screening cases, automating the labor-intensive data-entry and document collection, we significantly reduce the time each case takes to review. This allows us to deliver immigration services to low-income immigrants at a scale not possible for existing brick-and-mortar legal aid nonprofits. We estimate that with only 2 million annual site visitors, we will successfully help at least 12,000 people a year obtain legal status, significantly more than the 150-300 people served a year by a traditional brick-and-mortar immigration nonprofit.
We are well-positioned to solve this problem because of our founders' experience building the largest Chapter 7 bankruptcy nonprofit in America, Upsolve.org. Last year, Upsolve helped discharge more than $130 million of debt for almost 3,000 low-income American families with a 98% success rate. In addition to being featured in numerous publications like Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, Upsolve has been awarded Fast Company’s World Changing Idea Award (2019), the Robin Hood Heroes Award (2019), and the Harvard President’s Innovation Challenge (2017).
We are beyond excited to help thousands of Immigrants gain the freedom to live, work, and love in this great country! If our mission inspires you, we'd love your help - please chip in what you can to help support our work. We'll use these funds to improve our technology, pay our staff, and invest in new and innovative ways to make immigration more accessible to those who need it most.
Note: ImmigrationHelp.org is a DBA of Immigrants Like Us, a pending 501(c)(3) nonprofit fiscally-sponsored by The Social Good Fund.