Insights on immigration merit & strategy

What DHS and USCIS have actually changed since January 2025 — and what it costs the people standing in line

Open the State Department’s Visa Bulletin for September 2026 and find the row for EB-2, the employment-based category for people with advanced degrees.

The Engine vs. The Car: Why a Raw LLM Is Not a Product

Since the first release of our product, I’ve spent almost all my time in a single, intense loop: talking to users, gathering feedback, and running back to the team to…

USCIS Updates Its Guidance on RFEs and NOIDs

What Applicants and Attorneys Should Know

I Spent Two Years Angry at a Pile of Documents. So I'm Building the Thing I Needed.

Notes from building a startup on nights and weekends — while keeping the day job that funds it.

When USCIS Says Your Evidence “Cannot Be Considered Probative”: Certified Translations, Legibility, and the Hidden Trap of 8 C.F.R. § 103.2(b)(3)

Every year, thousands of otherwise strong immigration petitions are weakened — or denied outright — not because the underlying facts were insufficient, but because the…

What ChatGPT think about Meritocrat

I posted ChatGPT response here Meritocrat appears to be an interesting new entrant in the EB-1A/EB-2 NIW space, but it’s important to understand what it is—and what it…

What One Week of Real Users Taught Me About Building in Legal Tech

Notes from a bootstrapped founder on Reddit rabbit holes, attorney conversations, and why the real product work starts after you ship.

Stop Chasing Criteria. Start Building Your Case.

EB-1A, EB-2 NIW and O1 Immigration case A few months ago, I spoke with an engineer who had done everything right. He had built products people used.

We’re live. app.meritocrat.us is open.

If you’ve been following this newsletter, you watched us go from an idea to a validated framework to a working product — in less than a year.

Meritocrat as the Prefiling Intelligence Layer in Immigration Legal Tech

Immigration legal work is not only about filing forms or drafting petitions. For high-skill immigration categories such as EB-1A, EB-2 NIW, O-1, EB-1B, and similar…

Meritocrat: Keeping Legal Judgment with Attorneys While AI Organizes Evidence

Meritocrat: AI-Organized Legal Merit Workspace

Agentic AI in Law

Recently, I worked through the first phases of the A.G.E.N.T. Framework with Paski.