Primer No sales. Just facts.

Before you start: the hidden costs of DIY immigration

Immigration is high-stakes and asymmetric. Rules shift.Pricing is opaque. Workflows are analog. This page maps the structural frictions so you can plan with eyes open.

See the frictions Provider checklist

Structural frictions that raise cost and risk

These are features of the system, not isolated bugs.

Time-drain

Document retrieval, prep, and rework expand timelines.

Analog anchors

Legacy rules and paper flows force manual steps.

Multi-party mayhem

You coordinate across courts, firms, vendors, and agencies.

Steep learning curve

Every country and program has its own logic and terms.

Political whirlwinds

Policies and processing priorities shift with little notice.

Web riddles

Critical answers are buried in forums, PDFs, and old posts.

The three hidden costs of going it alone

Expensive

• Foreign vendors charge premiums
• Opaque government and courier fees
• Rework multiplies spend

Slow

• Dependencies stack up
• Paper adds idle time
• Appointments slip

Unaccountable

• No SLAS
• Diffuse responsibility
• Hard to audit progress

Observation: The system rewards hourly billing, fragmented vendors, and paper trails. Consumers bear the variance.

Why the market feels stacked against you

These are features of the system, not isolated bugs.

Dominance of country-specific solo firms

• Each office optimizes for its niche, not the cross-border consumer
• Price discovery is hard; quotes vary wildly
• Low incentive to digitize or standardize

Information asymmetry

• Key steps live in PDFs, state forms, and consulate pages
• Terminology mismatch leads to avoidable mistakes
• Consumers cannot benchmark outcomes or timelines