Latest / What's Your Problem? / Making Immigration Cheaper & Easier

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Making Immigration Cheaper & Easier · What's Your Problem?

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. When we first went public with it, I received,
0:24
Speaker 1: presumably from an attorney because they quoted law here, an
0:28
Speaker 1: anonymous threatening letter with magazine cutouts like they think, like
0:33
Speaker 1: eighties horror movie.
0:35
Speaker 2: Style, like a kidnapping letter exactly.
0:38
Speaker 1: That said like shut down your business, Like yeah, but.
0:41
Speaker 2: You're saying this. This magazine cutout letter was like quoting
0:44
Speaker 2: specific statutes or something.
0:46
Speaker 1: It was talking about unauthorized practice of law in a
0:49
Speaker 1: way that you would only do it if you were
0:51
Speaker 1: an attorney.
0:52
Speaker 2: Amazing. Is it framed on your wall?
0:55
Speaker 1: Tragically during an office move, it disappeared somewhere.
1:04
Speaker 2: I'm Jacob Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem? The
1:06
Speaker 2: show where I talk to people who are trying to
1:09
Speaker 2: technological progress. My guest today is Shao Wang. He's the
1:13
Speaker 2: founder of a company called Boundless. Chao's problem is this,
1:17
Speaker 2: how do you make it cheaper and easier for people
1:20
Speaker 2: to deal with immigration law or to frame it in
1:23
Speaker 2: a bigger way. How do you use technology to bring
1:26
Speaker 2: down costs in a bureaucratic, slow moving field where, by
1:30
Speaker 2: the way, the incumbents don't want you. Joo moved to
1:34
Speaker 2: the US from China when he was three years old.
1:37
Speaker 2: He grew up, and he worked a lot of places
1:39
Speaker 2: at McKinsey and at the New York Department of Education
1:43
Speaker 2: and at Amazon, before he ever had the idea to
1:46
Speaker 2: try to do anything about immigration.
1:49
Speaker 1: I had always taken it for granted that immigration is
1:52
Speaker 1: really hard. And if you grow up, like all of
1:55
Speaker 1: the friends, all of your circles around, everyone has their
1:59
Speaker 1: own struggle with the immigration system. And it always becomes
2:02
Speaker 1: a running joke around who had the toughest time, how
2:06
Speaker 1: many hours they were stuck in some back ron room
2:09
Speaker 1: and some concert or some airport, like the just constant
2:12
Speaker 1: stories about the fraughtness and the turmoil of being an immigrant.
2:17
Speaker 1: And I had always just taken for granted that that's
2:20
Speaker 1: just the way things were, That's just life. It's like,
2:24
Speaker 1: you know, the sun comes up. Yeah, people struggle with immigration.
2:27
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until twenty sixteen. I'm almost ashamed to
2:33
Speaker 1: talk about it this way, but it's like, is this
2:35
Speaker 1: the first time, late twenty sixteen that I actually asked
2:38
Speaker 1: a question why? Well, someone asked me the question why
2:42
Speaker 1: is immigration so hard?
2:43
Speaker 2: What was the context? Who asked you? That?
2:46
Speaker 1: It was someone who is someone in their office just
2:49
Speaker 1: went through an immigration process, foreign national married uses and
2:53
Speaker 1: had to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on their
2:56
Speaker 1: immigration attorney had a terrible experience, and the question was like,
3:00
Speaker 1: why is this whole thing so hard, so expensive? And
3:04
Speaker 1: they asked me because I was the I guess, the
3:06
Speaker 1: most immigrant looking person in the room, and I, uh,
3:10
Speaker 1: I said, that's a really good question. I have never
3:13
Speaker 1: thought that as like why. And the more that I
3:16
Speaker 1: like dug into why, like you know, you get to
3:19
Speaker 1: the point where you just learn too much. Right. I
3:22
Speaker 1: talked to hundreds of families, lawyers, government folks, and you
3:25
Speaker 1: realize that, like this, this has to be solved. It
3:28
Speaker 1: was unbelievable to me that this problem has existed for
3:31
Speaker 1: generations in the same way where every other you know,
3:35
Speaker 1: related field has like modernized or used data or used technology,
3:40
Speaker 1: or become more personalized, or become more efficient, or become
3:43
Speaker 1: more affordable or accessible, and immigration is stuck the same
3:46
Speaker 1: way that I did it with my parents. And the
3:48
Speaker 1: only thing that has changed in the thirty years that
3:51
Speaker 1: I've been in this country is that there are over
3:54
Speaker 1: five times has been the immigration attorneys. Even though the
3:56
Speaker 1: annual number of immigrants has stayed relatively the same and
3:59
Speaker 1: the prices have gone up, and so you put that
4:03
Speaker 1: You're like this, I can't not do something about it.
4:06
Speaker 2: I mean one like what you're like, how hasn't anybody
4:09
Speaker 2: done anything about this? But like it's the government and
4:13
Speaker 2: it's lawyers, and you know, to some extent people want
4:20
Speaker 2: immigration to be hard, right, to some extent politically bureaucratically,
4:24
Speaker 2: people want immigration to be hard. So it doesn't seem
4:27
Speaker 2: to me to be an obviously solvable or addressable problem
4:33
Speaker 2: that you're sort of setting out to solve or address.
4:35
Speaker 1: Where were you in my life in twenty six and
4:39
Speaker 1: it was like, by by February of twenty seventeen, I
4:44
Speaker 1: felt like I like I had an idea, right, I
4:47
Speaker 1: felt like, hey, we can make this more accessible that
4:51
Speaker 1: you know, this fundamentally is an information problem, right where
4:56
Speaker 1: you have all of these people who want to know
4:58
Speaker 1: and want to understand immigration, wanted to operate, and then
5:01
Speaker 1: you have only two groups of people that actually know
5:04
Speaker 1: what to do. You have the federal government who is
5:08
Speaker 1: again and uh make things opaque and doesn't release the information.
5:13
Speaker 1: And then you have immigration attorneys that are financially incentivized
5:17
Speaker 1: to be the only arbiters of this information and so
5:21
Speaker 1: this is like you know, from someone who you know
5:26
Speaker 1: my background, Like I tried to like transform the public
5:28
Speaker 1: education system that has been stuck in the same way.
5:32
Speaker 2: To be clear, you worked for the New York City
5:34
Speaker 2: Department of ED right, that's yes.
5:36
Speaker 1: And we launched new schools that tried different things like
5:40
Speaker 1: making school eleven months of the year and using technology
5:42
Speaker 1: different ways. Even at Amazon, there's like, how do we
5:45
Speaker 1: change physical retail where we launched Amazon Go and just
5:48
Speaker 1: work out where you can just take something and you
5:50
Speaker 1: leave and there's no checkout Like this, in my mind
5:52
Speaker 1: is another example of something that has been operating in
5:55
Speaker 1: the same way for generations and there has to be
6:00
Speaker 1: an opportunity for us to change that. And how can
6:02
Speaker 1: I help every family you know, have the confidence and
6:07
Speaker 1: the support and the services that you know previously were
6:11
Speaker 1: only available to those who could pay thousands and thousands
6:13
Speaker 1: of dollars for attorneys.
6:16
Speaker 2: And so you have this as the like big lofty,
6:19
Speaker 2: you know idea behind starting the company. Is there some
6:24
Speaker 2: particular service, some particular immigration related thing that is your
6:31
Speaker 2: sort of your wedge, your first thing you're going to try.
6:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the way that I looked at it was
6:36
Speaker 1: first it had to have a shorter timeline, right, So
6:40
Speaker 1: I needed to be able to show that we if
6:43
Speaker 1: you use us, it'll work. And if it takes years
6:46
Speaker 1: for something to get reviewed and approved, then like I
6:49
Speaker 1: don't have testimonials. Why would you trust your life to
6:51
Speaker 1: a company that doesn't work? And then the second part
6:54
Speaker 1: is is that it should be uncapped so we can
7:00
Speaker 1: like you know, create and have enough market to to
7:04
Speaker 1: create a adventure scalable business.
7:06
Speaker 2: And so just to be clear but un kept, I
7:08
Speaker 2: mean there are some some things like what the H
7:11
Speaker 2: one B visa for skilled workers where the government limits
7:14
Speaker 2: the number of people, and so you don't want to
7:16
Speaker 2: do something with a small number of people. You want
7:18
Speaker 2: to do something with a large number of people so
7:20
Speaker 2: that there's a big market for your service. That's exactly yeah, okay,
7:23
Speaker 2: and then so quick turn uncapped.
7:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then folks that I can acquire affordably through
7:31
Speaker 1: digital marketing means.
7:33
Speaker 2: Just classic online business. You want a relatively low customer
7:36
Speaker 2: acquisition cars.
7:37
Speaker 1: I want to be able to find something that people
7:39
Speaker 1: are actually searching for and are willing to like willing
7:42
Speaker 1: to to to you know, come learn about a new
7:46
Speaker 1: way of doing something that that that doesn't involve going
7:49
Speaker 1: into a mahogany clad office and like handing someone in
7:52
Speaker 1: the suit and tie all of your information. And so
7:55
Speaker 1: the first first wedge as that we picked was was
7:59
Speaker 1: around marriage green cards. So this is a US citizen
8:03
Speaker 1: who has fallen in love with and gotten married to
8:05
Speaker 1: a foreign national and now either wants to be able
8:09
Speaker 1: to help them stay in the country or bring them
8:12
Speaker 1: to the.
8:12
Speaker 2: Country, okay, and get them a green card, get basically
8:15
Speaker 2: a permanent resident status exactly.
8:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it has a top priority of on what
8:21
Speaker 1: the government reviews and.
8:25
Speaker 2: Quickly. It means it gets done quickly.
8:27
Speaker 1: Yeah.
8:28
Speaker 2: There's a lot of people, lots of US citizens are
8:30
Speaker 2: married to people who are not US citizens.
8:32
Speaker 1: Three to four hundred thousand the year, okay.
8:34
Speaker 2: And they're out there doing Google searches how do I
8:37
Speaker 2: get a green card for my spouse?
8:39
Speaker 1: Exactly to the point where you know, we were getting
8:44
Speaker 1: paying customers, like it was such a high need that
8:47
Speaker 1: we were getting paying customers before like our product is
8:52
Speaker 1: even done, right, yeah.
8:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, So what you have, like the website is up
8:58
Speaker 2: and people are like trying to get you to get
9:00
Speaker 2: them help them get a spouse a green card, but
9:02
Speaker 2: you don't sort of have your act together yet or
9:05
Speaker 2: what's going on there?
9:07
Speaker 1: I mean embarrassingly is that like we we have the
9:09
Speaker 1: first parts we want to learn, right, and it's like
9:12
Speaker 1: that demantra at the time is MVP and like get
9:14
Speaker 1: things out there, just do a thing. Yeah, And we
9:19
Speaker 1: didn't expect people to get as far through the process
9:22
Speaker 1: as they ended up doing, to a point where and
9:25
Speaker 1: we've actually we actually had to like add things, you know,
9:30
Speaker 1: in real time, as like somebody's.
9:31
Speaker 2: Going refreshed and you're like trying to make the webs.
9:35
Speaker 1: Like something isn't working, and so we're like making a
9:37
Speaker 1: quick fix and they're like, hey, maybe you should refresh
9:40
Speaker 1: your browser and see if it, you know, if it works.
9:42
Speaker 2: And are you literally sort of building an online pathway
9:45
Speaker 2: so they can like fill out the forms to get
9:47
Speaker 2: a spousal green card? Is it like that real? Is
9:49
Speaker 2: that what's happening?
9:51
Speaker 1: I mean? The idea here is that if we can
9:53
Speaker 1: translate complex government forms and requirements into steps that everyone
10:00
Speaker 1: can follow and feel confident in, then you could go
10:04
Speaker 1: end to end and be able to like get through
10:07
Speaker 1: a process that previously took again months on your own
10:10
Speaker 1: and do it in a couple of hours.
10:12
Speaker 2: Uh, is there like a moment when you realize, oh,
10:15
Speaker 2: it's actually gonna work. We're doing this.
10:18
Speaker 1: You're you're always like holding your breath until your first approval, right,
10:22
Speaker 1: Like when the first time the government like approves one
10:25
Speaker 1: of your customers, you're like, yes, I have changed that
10:27
Speaker 1: person's life. And then they you know that.
10:29
Speaker 2: Do you remember that moment?
10:31
Speaker 1: Yeah?
10:31
Speaker 2: What was what was the first approval?
10:34
Speaker 1: I mean it was this person that we have been
10:37
Speaker 1: helping and they I distinctly remember because they, you know,
10:42
Speaker 1: also used us for relationship therapy through this journey, right,
10:46
Speaker 1: and like, yeah, they call us and gives us updates
10:50
Speaker 1: about their life. And then we're all waiting because the
10:52
Speaker 1: government you don't know how long the government process takes,
10:56
Speaker 1: and you're just going along this journey with them. And
10:58
Speaker 1: then finally when they when they are approved, that it's
11:01
Speaker 1: just this huge moment of relief. We had this gong
11:04
Speaker 1: in the office where it was it was a gift
11:08
Speaker 1: from from an investor that we designated that we'll only
11:13
Speaker 1: hit this, you know, when when someone finally gets approved,
11:18
Speaker 1: and so it was it was a huge moment when
11:20
Speaker 1: we were able to hit that gone and when was
11:25
Speaker 1: that that was it would be late. We released our
11:30
Speaker 1: product late twenty seventeen, and so this would be middle
11:35
Speaker 1: of twenty eighteen because when we got the first one.
11:37
Speaker 2: So it was it was five years ago that you
11:40
Speaker 2: basically helped your first customer, right, Like how many people
11:44
Speaker 2: now have you helped get Green cards, visas?
11:47
Speaker 1: Whatever? Yeah, so we're coming up to our one hundred
11:50
Speaker 1: thousand customer.
11:52
Speaker 2: Okay, so it worked, it's working. So that's what we're
11:55
Speaker 2: used just so we can get a sense, like, how
11:58
Speaker 2: is what you offer different than what an immigration attorney offers.
12:02
Speaker 1: I think it's there are three three areas, and I
12:06
Speaker 1: think we are just better. It'll be blunt. Yeah. The
12:12
Speaker 1: first is the accessibility part. Right, we are one third
12:15
Speaker 1: one fifth the price of traditional immigration attorneys and.
12:19
Speaker 2: So to a fifth the price. So by accessibility, I
12:21
Speaker 2: mean it's just cheaper.
12:23
Speaker 1: It's far more affordable.
12:24
Speaker 2: I love cheaper, yeah.
12:27
Speaker 1: For families, and you know, we offer a you know,
12:31
Speaker 1: no credit check payment plan solution, so like people can
12:35
Speaker 1: also pay it over time, which they can't get access
12:38
Speaker 1: to for a lot of our families with you know,
12:40
Speaker 1: no credit history in the US and everything like anywhere else.
12:44
Speaker 1: The second part is that you know we have this.
12:48
Speaker 1: We have a ninety nine point nine to seven percent
12:51
Speaker 1: approval rate over close to one hundred thousand applications, so
12:54
Speaker 1: we have a lot more insights into what works and
12:58
Speaker 1: how it works and what the government is looking for, uh,
13:01
Speaker 1: and and are able to to to to translate that
13:05
Speaker 1: back and give those benefits back to our customers. And
13:08
Speaker 1: then the third is that you know we adapt to you.
13:14
Speaker 1: Unlike with the traditional attorney, we will operate at the
13:17
Speaker 1: speed that you operate at.
13:19
Speaker 2: So presumably it's cheaper in large part because your costs
13:22
Speaker 2: are a lot lower, because it's more efficient because what
13:26
Speaker 2: I mean, I imagine you don't always have to have
13:28
Speaker 2: an attorney, is that right?
13:29
Speaker 1: You know? When we first started, I was a persona
13:34
Speaker 1: non grata at like the Association of Immigration Lawyer's Association.
13:40
Speaker 2: I mean, you're you're you're undercutting them, like you're you're
13:43
Speaker 2: coming for their business, like your business is to come
13:46
Speaker 2: for their their margin is your opportunity to quote your
13:48
Speaker 2: old boss.
13:49
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, uh, when we first went public with it,
13:55
Speaker 1: I received, presumably from an attorney because they quoted law here,
13:59
Speaker 1: an anonymous threatening letter with magazine cutouts like they think
14:05
Speaker 1: like a horror movies. Exactly, that's it, like shut down
14:09
Speaker 1: your business.
14:10
Speaker 2: Like yeah, but you're saying this this magazine cutout letter
14:14
Speaker 2: was like quoting specific statutes or something.
14:17
Speaker 1: It was talking about unauthorized practice of law in a
14:20
Speaker 1: way that you would only do it if you're amazing.
14:23
Speaker 2: Is it framed on your wall?
14:26
Speaker 1: Tragically during an office move, it disappeared somewhere, and I'm
14:30
Speaker 1: hoping I can find it in the box. So but
14:34
Speaker 1: but now I actually I'm not only on their advisory board,
14:37
Speaker 1: but I give presentations every year to their membership about
14:41
Speaker 1: the future of immigration law. Because ultimately, the goal here
14:46
Speaker 1: is not to eliminate the attorney. The attorneys like do
14:49
Speaker 1: some really great work to help help families and help
14:54
Speaker 1: the system. The goal is to like take out all
14:57
Speaker 1: of the work that you don't need an attorney for
15:00
Speaker 1: and not have an attorney do it.
15:02
Speaker 2: This is a classic automation story, right, I mean, this is,
15:06
Speaker 2: you know, the automated spreadsheet, not putting accountants out of business,
15:10
Speaker 2: but meaning they don't have to like add columns of
15:12
Speaker 2: numbers anymore.
15:13
Speaker 1: Right Exactly.
15:17
Speaker 2: After the break the next problem Shao is trying to
15:20
Speaker 2: solve that Bountless. Now back to the show. So Shao
15:32
Speaker 2: got that threatening letter back when Boundless launched, and I
15:34
Speaker 2: asked him, what about now? Are lawyers still mad at Boundless? Now?
15:39
Speaker 1: I mean, at its core, the message has always been that, like,
15:45
Speaker 1: if you use services like ours, they're not the traditional
15:48
Speaker 1: law firm, you are putting yourself at risk because you
15:52
Speaker 1: are potentially, you know, increasing your risk of getting bad
15:56
Speaker 1: advice or getting bad outcomes. Yeah, and my counter point
16:01
Speaker 1: to that is that we have done more cases in
16:03
Speaker 1: any single law firm in our category, and we have
16:07
Speaker 1: fantastic outcomes. Yeah, compelling carry some weight, I guess. Yeah.
16:13
Speaker 2: You've cited this figure of like over ninety nine percent success,
16:16
Speaker 2: which is a very striking figure, and I mean it
16:19
Speaker 2: makes me wonder like, is part of the key to
16:21
Speaker 2: that telling people when not to apply. I feel like
16:24
Speaker 2: the way you get to ninety nine percent success is
16:27
Speaker 2: tell people not to apply if you don't think they're going.
16:29
Speaker 1: To get it. But I think that that's very valuable.
16:32
Speaker 2: So the interest thing is not valuable.
16:34
Speaker 1: We have we do have very clear eligibility criteria, and
16:38
Speaker 1: we base it off of what government publishes, and we
16:41
Speaker 1: base it off of the data that we've collected about
16:43
Speaker 1: how the government treats cases. So I'll give you an example. Like,
16:46
Speaker 1: you know, before a government asks for you know, one
16:49
Speaker 1: year your your previous year tax returns to show your
16:52
Speaker 1: your income eligibility for sponsor somewhere for a green card.
16:57
Speaker 1: And what we started discovering as we're looking at our
17:01
Speaker 1: cases is that like, if you're close to the to
17:04
Speaker 1: the threshold, they actually want three years. And so for
17:07
Speaker 1: some people, like if you look at the last three years,
17:10
Speaker 1: it's not quite enough. And so you could you could
17:13
Speaker 1: do You could either send it in and hope for
17:16
Speaker 1: the best right and and you know, collect their money,
17:18
Speaker 1: send it in cover the best, or you say, look,
17:21
Speaker 1: you know, we actually really think you need a joint
17:23
Speaker 1: sponsor or like a co sponsor, think of someone else
17:26
Speaker 1: who can backstop you in order for this to be successful.
17:30
Speaker 1: And you may be upset at us at boundless for
17:33
Speaker 1: asking for this, but we believe in setting you up
17:36
Speaker 1: for a positive outcome.
17:38
Speaker 2: Is part of your business data science, like as part
17:41
Speaker 2: of what you do, like mine your own data essentially
17:43
Speaker 2: to try and understand the patterns of how the government acts.
17:46
Speaker 1: Yes, and like look at the data that the government
17:50
Speaker 1: is reporting that like they don't make it easy to understand.
17:54
Speaker 1: Like there we published once a report that showed that
17:58
Speaker 1: by by your zip code, your processing times for a
18:02
Speaker 1: green carve can matter dramatically. So there's like three cities
18:06
Speaker 1: within close proximity to each other in Florida and then
18:09
Speaker 1: also in Texas that if you're just thirty minutes away,
18:13
Speaker 1: you're six months faster on the processing. Wow.
18:18
Speaker 2: And you just saw that in the data, because.
18:20
Speaker 1: We saw this in the data, and then we like
18:22
Speaker 1: publish it, and then the representatives of there's districts that
18:27
Speaker 1: went to you know you sah and be like, what's
18:30
Speaker 1: going on? And then USCS redistributed their workforce to like
18:35
Speaker 1: even some of these things out of a.
18:36
Speaker 2: Lot, that's a good one. That's a good one. What's
18:40
Speaker 2: the frontier, Like, what is the thing that you're trying
18:42
Speaker 2: to do next that you haven't figured out how to
18:45
Speaker 2: do yet?
18:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like an area a real unlock that I want
18:49
Speaker 1: to figure out over this next year is how can
18:51
Speaker 1: we lower the barrier to employing immigrants because fundamentally, like
18:58
Speaker 1: all of these great talent are stuck at the you know,
19:02
Speaker 1: Microsoft's metas, Amazons, Googles of the world and because it's
19:07
Speaker 1: safe and because they sponsor immigrant And there's so many
19:09
Speaker 1: small companies where you ask them in small business owners,
19:12
Speaker 1: you're like, hey, would you would you hire an immigrant?
19:14
Speaker 1: They're like absolutely not, not because they're anti immigrant, but
19:17
Speaker 1: because they don't have an HR team, they don't have resources,
19:20
Speaker 1: they don't like support.
19:21
Speaker 2: Just to be clear, you're talking about people who are
19:23
Speaker 2: here on work visas. It's just really hard for a
19:26
Speaker 2: company to employ an immigrant who's here on a work visa.
19:29
Speaker 2: It's costly.
19:30
Speaker 1: It's perceived to be hard, and it is and costly.
19:35
Speaker 1: And so what I want to be able to do
19:38
Speaker 1: is take all of these loyens we figured out on
19:41
Speaker 1: the family side around how to navigate the government process,
19:45
Speaker 1: how to translate these forms, how to execute it effectively
19:48
Speaker 1: and efficiently, and basically lower that barrier.
19:53
Speaker 2: And so in that universe, the client is not the immigrant.
19:58
Speaker 2: The client is the employer or the would be employer
20:01
Speaker 2: who wants to hire someone here on a work visa
20:03
Speaker 2: but just can't deal with the paperwork.
20:05
Speaker 1: And the cost exactly. And I want to make it
20:09
Speaker 1: so easy that it's as if you're hiring a recruiter, right,
20:14
Speaker 1: and everyone's okay, now paying a recruiter some money to
20:18
Speaker 1: bring you a candidate. And I imagine if it's like
20:21
Speaker 1: that's just as much effort as it takes to actually
20:24
Speaker 1: hire an immigrant, it would open up so much talent
20:30
Speaker 1: and support all of these small and medium sized businesses
20:33
Speaker 1: around the country.
20:35
Speaker 2: What do you feel like you understand now about either
20:40
Speaker 2: immigration or the law that you didn't when you started
20:43
Speaker 2: a company.
20:45
Speaker 1: I thought that immigration is a pretty clear win, and
20:52
Speaker 1: I thought that that would be an easy sell, Like
20:55
Speaker 1: even the concept of hey, we like, who wants bureaucracy?
20:59
Speaker 1: No one right, who wants additional folks like held in limbo, Like,
21:03
Speaker 1: no one who doesn't want economic prosperity. And it's amazed
21:09
Speaker 1: me or you know that have learned in this is
21:12
Speaker 1: that numbers don't really matter and and and it's it's
21:18
Speaker 1: you know, kind of tragic and and disappointing obviously as
21:22
Speaker 1: someone who you know, who studied economics. And then before
21:24
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, like this is something that I
21:27
Speaker 1: have been in rooms with very hard right wingers and
21:30
Speaker 1: very hard left wingers and everyone agrees on the solution.
21:34
Speaker 1: And and like there is a core piece of you know,
21:39
Speaker 1: of immigration reform that the majority of people actually agree
21:43
Speaker 1: to behind closed doors. If you have to combine you know,
21:47
Speaker 1: DACA and codify that into the program, the H one
21:50
Speaker 1: B and skilled immigration reform that we're talking about, you know, uh,
21:55
Speaker 1: lifting some of the green car caps and countries and
21:57
Speaker 1: getting people to start working sooner instead of just sitting
22:00
Speaker 1: around waiting to be able to work. You know, uh,
22:03
Speaker 1: you verify some sort of like way of like you know,
22:06
Speaker 1: holding companies accountable for hiring legal documented democrats. And this
22:10
Speaker 1: is the part that you know, I again, like I
22:14
Speaker 1: thought that I was coming at it from a world
22:16
Speaker 1: where like everyone should be in favor of what we're doing.
22:20
Speaker 1: And yeah, America has this one monopoly on the world, right,
22:25
Speaker 1: which is that people from all around the world who
22:29
Speaker 1: wanted to create the best lives for themselves, like my
22:32
Speaker 1: parents did, like you know, come here because of that opportunity.
22:37
Speaker 1: And we continually, year after year actively try to you know,
22:43
Speaker 1: diminish that that advantage that we have. And it's just
22:51
Speaker 1: it was just so surprising to me the level of
22:54
Speaker 1: animosity towards something that should be universally like appreciated, you know,
23:01
Speaker 1: with the appropriate nuances around it, but like it directionally
23:04
Speaker 1: should be we should all be on the same edge.
23:10
Speaker 2: We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round,
23:12
Speaker 2: including what Shall learned when he sold vacuum cleaners on
23:15
Speaker 2: commission in high school. Back to the show. Let's finish
23:26
Speaker 2: with the lightning round, and in your case, I want
23:29
Speaker 2: to do I want to do a lightning round about
23:33
Speaker 2: your resume, about your employment history, because it's a really
23:38
Speaker 2: interesting employment history, and maybe there's different ways to do it,
23:42
Speaker 2: but let's try this. Let's try. I'm going to name
23:44
Speaker 2: a bunch of the jobs you've held, and I want
23:47
Speaker 2: you to tell me one thing you learned at each job.
23:51
Speaker 2: When you were in high school, you sold vacuum cleaners
23:55
Speaker 2: and microwaves on commission at sears.
23:58
Speaker 1: I learn how to understand what people want. I'm a
24:05
Speaker 1: Chinese male, sixteen year old. My customers were fifty year
24:09
Speaker 1: old women and when I approach them, they are not
24:13
Speaker 1: thinking this man is a savant of house cleaning. And
24:18
Speaker 1: so how can I quickly get them to to to
24:24
Speaker 1: tell me what they're really looking for, what problem they're
24:27
Speaker 1: really is trying to solve, so that I can like
24:30
Speaker 1: get them to right, you know, piece of equipment to solve.
24:33
Speaker 1: It was something that was invaluable for me.
24:38
Speaker 2: To be honest, I was much more interested in hearing
24:41
Speaker 2: about your job selling vacuums at Sears than I am
24:43
Speaker 2: in hearing about your job at mackenzie. But I'm curious,
24:46
Speaker 2: what is one thing you learned at McKenzie.
24:52
Speaker 1: I I learned how to maximize time. Like, you never
25:01
Speaker 1: have enough time and there's always more to do, and
25:05
Speaker 1: so in the world where you can never feel like
25:07
Speaker 1: you're done with work, what is the way that you
25:09
Speaker 1: can create time?
25:14
Speaker 2: Can you give me one little tip of how I
25:18
Speaker 2: can create time.
25:19
Speaker 1: It's about letting go. And so the more that I
25:25
Speaker 1: tapped into other resources and other folks that can work
25:30
Speaker 1: in parallel doing something, then the less sequential waiting for
25:37
Speaker 1: each step of the process to get done.
25:39
Speaker 2: What's one thing you learned when you were Director of
25:43
Speaker 2: Innovation and Design at the New York City Department of Education.
25:48
Speaker 1: True progress doesn't care about how smart or right you
25:52
Speaker 1: think you are.
25:54
Speaker 2: In my mind, there this is the hot shot mckensey.
25:58
Speaker 2: Analysts showing up at the Department of Ed ready to
26:00
Speaker 2: solve all their problems exactly.
26:03
Speaker 1: And I'm embarrassed right because I made a clown out
26:07
Speaker 1: of myself in many kinds of situations because I thought
26:09
Speaker 1: I knew the answer, and I thought, like everything that's
26:12
Speaker 1: been doing right now is failing our kids. And while
26:15
Speaker 1: like no one disagree with the outcomes that that, you know,
26:18
Speaker 1: we were struggling with the way to actually get principles, parents, teachers, students,
26:26
Speaker 1: bus drivers, you know, lunch ladies, you know, cable companies
26:31
Speaker 1: to all actually want to help you requires more than
26:36
Speaker 1: you thinking that you're you're you know, you have the
26:38
Speaker 1: answer and everyone else has been screwing it up for
26:40
Speaker 1: the whole time.
26:41
Speaker 2: Okay, so that's the end of the sort of resume
26:43
Speaker 2: lightning round. Now let's do a little classic style lightning round.
26:47
Speaker 2: What is one tip for that scary moment when you're
26:51
Speaker 2: you know, entering a country and you have to show
26:53
Speaker 2: your passport to the customs officials or the border guard
26:55
Speaker 2: or whatever. Do you have any professional advice for how
26:58
Speaker 2: to deal with that interaction.
27:02
Speaker 1: Don't lie. I don't know what gets into people where
27:07
Speaker 1: they will just start saying things that are not totally true.
27:14
Speaker 1: It's a you know, if you don't need to answer
27:17
Speaker 1: more than they ask for.
27:19
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
27:21
Speaker 1: But don't make anything off because that gets far. It
27:25
Speaker 1: turns into a far worse situation.
27:27
Speaker 2: If everything goes well, what problem will you be trying
27:30
Speaker 2: to solve in five years?
27:32
Speaker 1: How can we make every person in the world be
27:38
Speaker 1: able to live where they want, be with the person
27:42
Speaker 1: they want, and achieve the life that they want.
27:47
Speaker 2: By every person in the world in five years is audacious.
27:52
Speaker 2: I mean, you do now offer people payment plans, right,
27:56
Speaker 2: so you are already in the business of extending credit
27:59
Speaker 2: to people. Do you think you might get into the
28:02
Speaker 2: financial services business?
28:04
Speaker 1: I want people to thrive, all right, and there's so
28:07
Speaker 1: many barriers, like and I'm not saying this to be
28:11
Speaker 1: like facetious anything.
28:13
Speaker 2: It's a coy answer.
28:14
Speaker 1: It's a coy It's like, I don't want people to
28:17
Speaker 1: be like I want to remove every barrier possible between
28:23
Speaker 1: you and the life that you want to achieve. I
28:26
Speaker 1: want to help people go and live anywhere in the
28:29
Speaker 1: world that they want. So if you can think of
28:30
Speaker 1: that as a global like peace, I want to help
28:33
Speaker 1: people like be able to establish themselves well in that world.
28:37
Speaker 2: So that's that's basically financial services. If I want to
28:40
Speaker 2: make a specific version of establish themselves, I think financial.
28:44
Speaker 1: Services, Yeah, I think you know, healthcare, education, family based
28:49
Speaker 1: things like yeah, I mean I pick, I pick boundless
28:52
Speaker 1: for a reason. Right, we are not like IMMIGRATIONUS dot com.
28:57
Speaker 2: But everything for everybody dot everything.
29:01
Speaker 1: I feel like that's a pretty good TAM. Right.
29:10
Speaker 2: PAM, by the way, stands for total addressable market, so
29:14
Speaker 2: measure of how big a business could theoretically be someday,
29:17
Speaker 2: and show here is saying unless might someday.
29:19
Speaker 1: Be very very big.
29:22
Speaker 2: Today's show was produced by Edith Russelo, edited by Sarah Nix,
29:26
Speaker 2: and engineered by Amanda K.
29:28
Speaker 1: Wall.
29:29
Speaker 2: You can email us at problem at Pushkin dot fm,
29:31
Speaker 2: or you can find me on Twitter at Jacob Goldstein.
29:34
Speaker 2: I'm Jacob Goldstein, and we'll be back next week with
29:36
Speaker 2: another episode of What's Your Problem