FastFile

TurboTax for work visas in the U.S.

108 followers

TurboTax for work visas in the U.S.

108 followers

Built by a government lawyer turned software engineer, FastFile helps companies support their employees’ TN status applications quickly and easily. We eliminate tedious correspondences and avoidable human errors, saving thousands of hours and dollars.

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Launch tags:Hiring•SaaS•Legal

Launch Team

FastFile

Maker

Hi Product Hunt 👋! We started FastFile because we’ve spent too much of our lives dealing with the painful process of filing government forms, including some of the most difficult of all: visa applications. FastFile will make applying for TN status a breeze for you and your employees alike! Typically, when you think of applying for TN status for your new hires, you would picture - A laborious process of screening for a reliable immigration law firm, coordinating back-and-forth information gathering sessions, and waiting for the law firm to do their “magic,” - A series of avoidable mistakes that result in rejections and delays, such as typos, unclear communications, insufficient preparations, etc. - An opaque process with no status update and no clarification on why certain things are needed - An excruciatingly long response time - A hefty lawyer fee averaging $2.5K to $4K with no success guarantee You would be right to dread it. I have heard too many horror stories like this from companies, even when working with well-known names in immigration law. As a lawyer who spent years working and volunteering for the government, I learned about how frustrating it can be for businesses to try to understand the obscure language and rules of government petitions. So much time is wasted on interpreting the simplest requests by companies - precious time that should be used on improving products and growing. That is why I decided to become a software engineer and started exploring solutions to this problem with technology. Today, I am beyond excited to share our solution with the Product Hunt community - **FastFile TN Solution:** With our solution, you can expect to: - Move through a petition from start to review within 24 hours without human errors - Understand clearly how your information on the offer letter and employer support letter translates to the USCIS officer at the border - Learn the up-to-date requirements, statistics, and tips to maximize the probability of approval - Get instant responses to clarify your questions and concerns - Pay a fraction of the cost of a lawyer at $495, with a success guarantee backed by a full refund + free unlimited tries If you want to file a petition for TN status today, find us at fastfile.app to schedule an onboarding call and get the process started! I am eager to hear from you on your pain points with work visas! I would absolutely love to learn from your experience and insights on this problem and the challenges for all types of work visas. DM us, drop a comment down below, or email us at jacob@fastfile.app! Best, Jake

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4yr ago

@jacob_sklar Congratulations on the launch 🚀

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4yr ago

@jacob_sklar This is cool, but since TN visas are only available to Canadian and Mexican citizens in certain industries - namely the high paying ones with certifications like lawyers or accountants, and the TN visa can be obtained at the point of admission for Canadian citizens, but there's also a good chance that your employer would have their counsel prepare the I-129 ahead of time or simply have the applicant apply at the border. Since there's no visa requirement for Canadians to enter the US (the pain point is getting to a status where you're able to work legally and hopefully COS/AOS if you so wished), and with the caveat that all my experience happened under the Obama administration, which had a poor record in punitive enforcement of admin code but compared to the morasse that came with the Trump admin, there doesn't seem to be a lot of room to err for the applicant, at least coming from Canada. The Mexican side of things might be entirely different, but that's a consular processing matter and the forms and qualifications required appeared pretty similar. Even if the clerical work is done by paralegals, because of the sometimes arbitrary and more or less capricious manner any individual visa officer interprets the rules, and since the targeted applicants can usually afford it, the attorney, or an associate, is usually on hand even if they're not doing the talking. Obviously other visa categories can be a mess and half and the whole immigration system is broken and dysfunctional writ large, I'm wondering if TN eligible applicants make sense as the demographic you target first since they frequently need the least amount of help, Visa Waiver entries excepted. This feels like something that could go much further if you provided it to the employers who are extending a job offer and I-129 at the same time to say, a newly minted McGill grad with a MA in Finance or something, or a UQAM STEM grad. After all, not everybody is going from McGill to Bank of America or something. Plenty of medium or smaller sized firms without in-house counsel that has relevant experience would see this service as a far more valuable offering that might tilt the odds if an applicant had multiple offers on the table. Immigration law is its own island even within the admin legal community because of its general complexity and how much of the old 19th Century designations (alien? coolie? A chapter in the US Code simply titled 'the Exclusion of the Chinese'? They're all still on the books, but the modern regulations can be just as vague and only a little less overtly racist). I don't know how much demand exists in Mexico but the lawyer ultimately is a service industry gig and our policies facially favor those coming from Canada, so every bit of potential advantage helps. This is definitely an interesting direction for the tech to be going towards - I think the N400, while longer and more expensive, would be far more conducive to a more or less AI-guided workflow to fill, However, even that would probably warrant having an attorney sign a G-28 just for peace of mind. At least, that's the bare minimum I would need. Just my two cents. Best of luck with your endeavors and shoot me a PM if you run into a Native American tribe that has a particularly lax standard for both membership and little social taboo about divorce, since a no-fault instant divorce feels like the easiest "state-imposed-hoop" to overcome in app format and will always end up cheaper than the current system.😂

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4yr ago

FastFile

Maker

@jim_zhou Thanks for the thoughtful comment! The immigration system is indeed very difficult and painful for many people to navigate. Though some may have an easy time getting TN status, we've also talked to companies about times when employees were denied at the border because of errors in their paperwork, so we feel that there is room for improvement. We're definitely planning on expanding beyond the TN status application, and the I-129 and associated visas are a natural next step!

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4yr ago

WhiteLabel Games 🎮

Great product. Will you have any product for startup visa processing like legalpad? Congrats on the launch!

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4yr ago

OpenSight

Maker

@ashrahman Thank you!! YES! Glad you mentioned LegalPad - we are also working on solutions for H1B, O1, L1, E1, etc. We want to make filing for all types of work visas and government petitions in the U.S. for founders and employees as easy as filing your taxes with TurboTax!

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4yr ago

As someone who just went through the process of getting a work visa in the US, I can vouch for how much a service like this is needed and this is definitely to team to make it happen 🙌🙌

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4yr ago

OpenSight

Maker

@avomir Thank you so much!! Really grateful for your insights while we are building the TN solution!! We strive to make companies and their employees' interactions with the government as frictionless as possible so everyone can focus on building and growing! TN is just the first step!

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4yr ago

This is amazing! It's like Boundless but for a TN visa instead of a K1/Marriage visa! Something that is so needed, congrats on the launch and excited to watch things unfold! P.S. Love the domain name 🔥

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4yr ago

OpenSight

Maker

@alexhbass Thanks so much, Alex!! We couldn't have done it without your amazing feedback - working on getting more and more government forms and petitions rolled out as we speak!

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4yr ago