Immigration AI, IRCC strike ends and an in-person conference

Happy May everyone, time sure does fly and it's nice to get some warmer - albeit rainier - weather here in Toronto. Let's jump into some immigration and business updates:

AI in immigration

Unless you've been living under a rock lately, you probably haven't gone too long without seeing "AI" pop up here, there or everywhere. It's no doubt having a huge impact around the world and across industries, and we think it will have a huge part to play in the world of immigration.

In the last 2 weeks we - over at Visto.ai - have:

• expanded our platform and AI to now help automate the Canadian visitor visa (aka Temporary Resident Visa) for immigration professionals. More info from my LinkedIn announcement here
• posted about 3 key ways we see AI helping immigration professionals save time and grow their immigration firms in a recent blog post here
• shared some thoughts on the impact of AI on the business of immigration, as in, how it may impact pricing, profit margins, competition and more. My thoughts in a LinkedIn post here

And when it comes to immigration and AI, I'm sure things are only just warming up...

Immigration news

The last few weeks in Canadian immigration have been a whirlwind. Big Express Entry draws, strikes, smaller draws, confusion over the effects of strikes on draws... you name it. In my opinion, the 2 most important updates:

• IRCC still did an EE draw near the end of April while employees were still on strike. It was a smaller draw than average, but still a good sign for those looking for Canadian PR. More info and my thoughts here
• the strike officially ended May 1, and only lasted 8 business days. In the grand scheme of things, I think this is amazing news. It will be interesting to see if/how this impacts processing times, but it will take months of time and keeping an eye on decisions before we can really try to understand if there were any major downsides

CBA in-person event and my latest podcast

On June 1, the Visto team will be attending the CBA Immigration Law Conference in Ottawa, "featuring three days of key learning delivered by recognized lawyers, judges, and public employees at the front-line of immigration practice and policy."

As an immigration lawyer and tech cofounder, it's safe to say I'm pretty excited. If you'll be attending, please let me know or make sure to say "hi" in-person!

Episode 7 of my business podcast just went live as well, where good friend Chris Silvestri and I chat about our experiences and ups and downs of building our respective businesses every few weeks (Chris runs his own copywriting/UX agency, and I of course am building immigration software at Visto, so you get a nice mix of industries). Check out the recent episode here.

That's it!

That's it for the most recent update. With all of the action around immigration and also AI, I think it will continue to be busy times - at least until they potentially slow down a bit in the summer (as they sometimes do).

Thanks as always for following along on my journey. If you're interested in our Canadian immigration tech then definitely checkout Visto here , or more of my "building in public" business stories and lessons here.

All the best!