Episode 45: The impact of AI on immigration law and global mobility

It’s Oct. 12, and this is your BAL Immigration Report.

• Passport wait times finally begin to improve.
• Domestic visa renewal could be a game-changer — but it will take time and resources.
• A look at the impact artificial intelligence may have on immigration law.

“That’s really the big advantage of these systems, as it allows us to look at more data faster, gain insights and then use those in our advice.”

—Edward Rios, BAL Partner

U.S. news

Passport wait times decrease

Wait times for U.S. passports are finally beginning to improve. As of Oct. 2, processing is now taking eight to 11 weeks for routine applications and five to seven weeks for expedited applications.

The State Department says the improved times are a result of aggressive recruiting and hiring at passport agencies, tens of thousands of overtime hours and the opening of a new satellite office. Recent demand has been the highest in U.S. history, with over 24 million passport books and cards issued in the past year.

Domestic visa renewal update

Domestic visa renewal could be a game-changer — but it will take time and resources. That’s according to BAL Senior Counsel Tiffany Derentz in a piece published this week in Best Lawyers’ Immigration Law legal guide.

Since 2004, nonimmigrant visa holders have had to go abroad to have their visas renewed. The State Department is now working on a pilot program that would allow some visa holders to renew their visas in the United States. Derentz says that while the idea holds a lot of promise, the pilot will be limited in scope — scaling up to cover more applicants will be a challenge, she says.

U.S. news roundup

• The Department of Homeland Security announced the extension of Temporary Protected Status for Cameroon.
• The State Department released the November Visa Bulletin, showing no movement in key employment-based categories.
• S. Citizenship and Immigration Services confirmed it will use the Dates for Filing chart to determine filing eligibility.

Spotlight

Conversation with Edward Rios, BAL partner: immigration law and artificial intelligence.

BAL Immigration Report: In November 2022, research company OpenAI released ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot that creates humanlike conversational dialogue, responds to queries and develops content of all sorts. Edward Rios, a BAL partner who leads the firm’s Boston office and its innovation and strategy group, says that BAL is excited about the potential of AI and that the firm’s history of embracing technology is tied to the ways in which it is different from a traditional law firm.

Rios: The first and I’d say the most significant difference, apart from our focus being exclusively in one practice area — global mobility and corporate immigration — is the economic structure of the firm, meaning we don’t operate on the traditional billable hour model but rather a flat fee model for the vast majority of our work outside of specialized government strategies and compliance advisory projects, basically. So what does that mean? It means that we don’t live our lives in point-one-of-an-hour increments, these six-minute increments, thankfully.
I’ve lived in that model for a long time. It’s not ideal for immigration practice or really for driving innovation. That’s a major difference for us.

What that’s allowed us to do is focus on the development of new technologies that make the practice of immigration law more efficient, ultimately bringing to bear on the practice new ways of doing things that are better than the old ways. Our model was built 40 years ago on the premise that we needed to deliver these services efficiently and that we wanted to spend the majority of our time explaining and guiding and advising on complex issues and the arcane processes of immigration. Technology was the tool that would allow us to do that.

BAL: BAL’s reliance on technology has been central to its growth and success. The firm’s award-winning case management platform, Cobalt, was the first of its kind to use AI and machine learning in the management of immigration cases. Rios described how AI is being used in immigration law today and how it might be used in the future.

Rios: Stepping back a second here, there are different forms of AI.I won’t go into too much technical detail, but the AI systems that we’re using now are different than those that are grabbing headlines with generative AI systemsso we’ll start there. We’ve been using different types of AI for a long while, and that matches the trends in society and business. These are common systems. If you’ve used a spam filter, for example, you’re using an AI system. If you’ve ever seen an ad or a product recommendation based on something that you’ve bought previously, you’re experiencing an AI system. Those labeling systems are common. In immigration practice today, where you would see it is in certain things like document management systems or case tracking and filtering, even document production systems that pull data from one source, like a questionnaire or a data lake, filter and and discern whether that data meets requirements that we need, and then puts that data where it should be, like on a form or in a support document. Those are common uses today.

Other uses that are of interest in immigration law, but also in many other industries like banking and insurance, healthcare, etc., are sorting things like incoming mail and routing materials and information to the relevant teams, updating systems with that data from the mail and so on. Those are pretty common uses today, and we use them.

Those are basic tasks, though, when you think about it, and not what people are thinking about when they hear the latest headlines on generative AI. That’s where the future comes in. In the future, we’re looking to take the next steps moving from labeling and sorting data and leveraging those kinds of common systems to the emerging large language model, the LLM system. What those do is they allow us to take broader angles and views at a faster pace so that we can gain insights from our data and make decisions faster, with deeper considerations and more nuanced aspects of the issues, and to do so more consistently. So I think that’s really the big advantage of these systems, as they allow us to look at more data faster, gain insights and then use those in our advice.

BAL: While AI has significant business potential, it also has created anxiety across several industries, including law. In March 2023, a Goldman Sachs report estimated that 44% of work tasks in the U.S. legal industry could be automated by AI. We asked Rios whether he views AI as a replacement for humans in the legal industry or a tool that will enable them to provide the best insights and analysis.

Rios: That’s the scary question that AI has always brought up, whether it was the common systems that I mentioned before, whether those would replace certain roles or if they would augment them. I think what you see with any of these technologies is a shift in role, and so the focus is a negative one, on replacing. You’ll see the headlines, they are a bit doom and gloom. But what I think it is going to do is precipitate a shift in roles, and I’ll say a little bit more about that. I think in the next couple of years — say, two to three years — we’ll be moving away from solely identifying data and moving it somewhere else where you can make use of it, like it’s a raw material or a component. We’re going to be moving away from that, although that’ll still be in use. I think the focus will be analytical systems that help people make nuanced decisions and allow people to communicate more effectively, be it using, say, tone analysis, giving you the proper tone, providing the appropriate level of detail and a response, what have you. These systems are going to make sure that messages come across from human to human.

So I think a big focus of the systems that are coming forward now will be on how can we better communicate with each other, which I think is a fantastic use. That will mean that some of the folks that are focusing on giving certain reports or data or other pieces of information that help us make that communication will simply be providing that information in a different way. They’ll be focused on curating, I’d say, the large language models and the prompt engineering that goes along with making sure we’re getting out of those systems what we need. And so I think roles will shift certainly, like in any technological advance. Some will be replaced, but then some will be created. And I think that’s the cycle of technology. Generative AI systems will come in and serve as aids to attorneys. Very specifically, I think some of the headlines have been focused on whether the attorney role will exist in the same way. And I think it’ll become the purer form of an attorney role, that of an adviser and a guide through complex systems. And what these technologies will allow us to do is to be able to focus that advice and exercise our very human, real judgment in difficult situations and to provide that advice person to person. I think that’s going to be the focus.

BAL: Rios will join BAL Chief Information Officer Jason Chancellor at the Worldwide ERC’s Global Workforce Symposium in Boston next week. The two will hold a discussion on how iterative AI and other emerging technologies are reimagining immigration programs and global mobility.

Global news

Hamas attacks Israel

Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on Israel over the weekend, prompting a declaration of war by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The U.S. Embassy in Israel stated the situation in Israel “remains dynamic” and said mortar and rocket fire may take place without warning. Travelers are urged to exercise caution and plan ahead. Ben Gurion Airport remains open at this time, but many major airlines have suspended air service to and from Israel.

Israel’s government has extended the validity of work visas until Nov. 9, 2023, for all foreign nationals in the country whose visas will expire within the next month. BAL will continue following the situation and will provide updates as information becomes available.

U.K. committee makes recommendations

The United Kingdom’s Migration Advisory Committee has called for abolishing the country’s Shortage Occupation List, or SOL. The SOL is the list of skilled jobs for which local workers are deemed to be in shortage. The employers for occupations on the SOL may bypass normal salary requirements and hire non-European Economic Area workers at lower salaries. The Migration Advisory Committee says employers should not be allowed to pay below the going rate. While committee recommendations are influential and often adopted, they are not binding.

Global news roundup

• Italy has announced new quota numbers for non-European Economic Area workers.
• The Canadian government has extended measures to support Syrian and Turkish nationals.
• South Africa made minor changes to its Critical Skills list.

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