Immigration will undoubtedly play a major role in the upcoming 2024 presidential election. It was also a key issue in the first debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in late June.
For Plymouth founder Lisa Weden, immigration is personal: Her US visa was denied twice — first in March 2020 for the H-1B lottery, a temporary visa for skilled workers, and then in August 2020 for an O-1 visa, which is for individuals with extraordinary ability.
“I was working with a terrible law firm that just didn't understand my story,” Wehden said. “I felt defeated.”
She applied again with a different attorney, and this time, a month later, her application for an O-1 visa was successful. She quickly applied for a green card and was granted permanent resident status, allowing her to live and work in the United States indefinitely.
“When I got my green card, I decided to quit my job and spend a year working on things that really mattered to me, and immigration was one of them,” Wehden says. And so Plymouth was born.
Plymouth is an immigration services company targeting the tech industry. The company was founded in 2022 as an educational project, with Werden sharing resources to help people like himself navigate the bureaucratic process. Since then, Plymouth has become a valuable resource for immigrant tech workers.
Immigrants drive American innovation
Wehden noted that some of the biggest tech companies are founded or run by immigrants: Microsoft, Nvidia, Google, the list goes on. According to a 2023 report by the American Immigration Council, immigrants or children of immigrants founded 224 of the companies on the Fortune 500 list, making up 44.8% of the total.
Still, moving to the US isn't easy, even for those with highly in-demand tech skills. First, demand simply exceeds availability: The number of work visas granted annually has remained unchanged since 1990. The US issues just 140,000 work visas and 85,000 H-1B visas annually.
These limitations make it especially difficult for technology companies to hire AI engineers and researchers during the generative AI boom.
To make matters worse, the immigration process in the US is bureaucratic and confusing. “Employers will typically work with immigration service providers to support their employees,” Wehden says, but this support is limited to a small number of companies, leaving employees highly dependent on their employers.
Immigrants who are sponsored by their employers are tied to their current jobs and if fired must find a new job within 60 days or leave the country. All these factors, along with low approval rates, make immigration a difficult challenge, even for highly skilled workers.
Plymouth employees and customers Lisa Weden
Visas for “special” people
All of these challenges left Wehden convinced that there must be a better alternative to the H1-B visa, the most common visa for immigrants working in the tech industry. “You don't know if you're going to be accepted,” Wehden says. “There's no agency around to tell you if you're going to get a visa.”
Plymouth is built for founders, researchers, and engineers with unique backgrounds who may not qualify for an H-1B visa, which requires a college degree, but may actually qualify for an O-1 visa.
The O-1 visa is less well known than the H1-B visa, and even those who do know about it may seem out of reach because it is intended for individuals with “extraordinary ability.”
“I thought the O-1 was for people like Justin Bieber and super famous, super talented people,” Wehden said.
Plymouth's first step is educating applicants about their options. There are eight criteria for an O-1 visa, and applicants must meet three to qualify. “A big part of meeting the criteria for an O-1 is practicing telling a story about yourself,” Wehden says.
Gabrielle Peterson, a mid-journey engineer and high school dropout, initially considered an H-1B visa but realized she needed a college degree. But after a free 10-minute consultation with Primus, Peterson realized she might qualify for an O-1 visa.
Plymouth's software collects evidence of an applicant's accomplishments and structures an application for them step-by-step, making the application process more manageable. For example, the company worked with Peterson to identify examples of his past work, including a Stack Overflow answer that has been viewed millions of times, to help him apply for an O-1 visa.
“They asked me the right questions and explored what avenues were possible,” Peterson said.[They] It brings up things that can be submitted that I would never have thought of that could count as one of the O1 criteria.”
While Plymouth is not a law firm, it partners with a network of attorneys and case managers to help applicants with the application process, and it also has a network of industry experts who can provide letters of recommendation, a required step in the O-1 application process.
Plymouth turns around visa applications in six weeks, whereas traditional providers can take up to four months, Weden said. The company has had 115 of 116 total applications approved. So far, 85% of the company's applications have been O-1 visas, but the company also assists with green card applications. Plymouth partners with fast-growing AI companies, including Midjourney, RunChain, Replit and Together AI.
Plymouth isn't the only company using technology to streamline the immigration process. Earlier this year, Plymouth co-founder Min Kim left Plymouth to start Lighthouse, which also helps tech workers with the immigration process. Other digital immigration service platforms include Boundless and SimpleCitizen, which focus on green card processing. Visas AI and Visalaw AI both develop AI tools for immigration lawyers, and LegalPad helps startups apply for visas on behalf of employees.
Plymouth has raised an undisclosed amount in grant funding from the Institute for Progress, Schmidt Futures, Emergent Ventures and Talent Mobility Fund. The company has 14 employees.
Long term, Wehden said, “We aim to make Plymouth the gateway to the American Dream. We are focused on supporting immigrants on their journey, but over time we hope to expand into offering additional services to support their journey in America.”
