16th January 2026
Date
Interviewee
Roman Zelichenko
An interview with the founder who transformed a train conversation into a compliance software company serving hundreds of immigration law firms
Roman Zelichenko was sitting in a meeting at a multi-billion dollar fintech company when something clicked. The European legal team was explaining new financial regulations to the product team, translating dense legal language into requirements that developers could build. "Wait a minute," he thought. "I know the immigration regs. I'm the lawyer that can read them and understand them. And I know enough about coding where I can turn it into something that a developer could understand." That moment of clarity would eventually lead to LaborLess, an immigrationcompliance automation platform now used by hundreds of immigration lawyers and some of the largest immigration law firms across America.
But the path from that corporate conference room to founding his own company was far from linear. It began decades earlier, with a two-year-old boy whose family fled Ukraine.
Roman Zelichenko's Immigration Story: From Ukraine to Queens
Zelichenko arrived in America as a refugee from the Soviet Union, though he has no memory of the journey itself. What he does remember is growing up in Queens, New York, surrounded by other immigrant families. "Every one of my friends was from somewhere," he recalls. "It was never really something that I had felt on a regular basis because every one of my friends was from somewhere."
His family didn't dwell on the past. They had fled antisemitism, and unlike immigrant families who return regularly to visit their homeland, the Zelichenkos looked forward. "We didn't really think about the past on a regular basis," he explains. "It wasn't like an immigrant story where family comes and they have all these amazing memories from their country and they go back every year. I had never been back, actually, to Ukraine."
When Russia's invasion of Ukraine began, Zelichenko felt a particular sadness. The city where he was born and spent his first two years had been heavily damaged. "It's sad that I never got to see it," he says quietly, before quickly adding that he stays in touch with distant relatives still there, sending money and support when he can.
How a Train Conversation Led Roman Zelichenko to Immigration Law
The journey to immigration law began, appropriately enough, with an immigrant's resourcefulness. Zelichenko had gone to Brooklyn Law School after graduating with a BS in Financial Economics and a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Law at Binghamton University, where heworked as an intern at investment banks every summer. He wanted an intellectual challenge that finance couldn't provide. But as a first-year law student, he struggled to find a summer internship.
Enter his mother and a daily train commute. "My mother took the train with a paralegal every day," Zelichenko recounts. "They were just sort of friendly from being on the train all the time and saying hi." When the paralegal mentioned her team was looking for a legal intern, his mother passed along the opportunity.
Zelichenko had always envisioned working in corporate law, but when he looked up the law firm that his mother said was looking for an intern and saw "corporate immigration" on their website, he figured it was close enough. That summer, he worked on a variety of employment immigration matters, including O-1 visas for extraordinary ability individuals, and something shifted. "It was so interesting and it was so fun," he remembers. "We were working, bringing these amazing people into America. And I really kind of started to love the industry."
His strategy crystallized: specialize early to stand out. "If I specialized even as a student and really focused on immigration law, I would be more likely to get a job after I graduated," he reasoned. The bet paid off.
HIAS and LaborLess: Roman Zelichenko's Full-Circle Immigration Journey
One of the most meaningful chapters came when Zelichenko interviewed at HIAS, previously called the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. When he came home and mentioned the organization to his mother, her response stopped him cold.
"She was like, 'Oh, yeah, HIAS. I know them.' And I asked her how she knew about them. She said, 'Well, that's the nonprofit organization that resettled our family when we moved to the U.S. as refugees.'"
The realization hit him hard. His family's immigration story and his professional career had been intertwined all along, even if he hadn't been conscious of it. On to of that,years later, some of his former colleagues from those law school immigration internships have become clients of LaborLess, creating still more full-circle moments in his career.
Building LaborLess: From Immigration Attorney to Tech Founder
After law school, Zelichenko worked at a firm in Arlington, Virginia, handling high-volume H-1B visas. He loved the client interactions, strategizing with them, and ultimately helping them understand their situations. But the administrative work weighed on him. "I probably spent too much time on the phone with my clients because that to me was the most important thing," he admits. "And then I would end up working really late because, well, after you're done talking to clients, you have to fill out the I-129, you have to file the LCA, you have to follow up on emails."
It was during this period that he first noticed the inefficiency in LCA compliance. The labor condition application process, the posting requirements, the public access files, all of it was presumed to be done manually. The industry didn’t have any dedicated technology solution for it.
But Zelichenko wasn't ready to act on the idea. "I was a second-year attorney. I had no idea how to build a business, especially a tech company. I didn't have the confidence to do that." He didn't come from an entrepreneurial family. "I've had ideas my whole life," he explains, "but I never took them seriously."
Instead, he took a detour that would prove invaluable. He left the firm, and law practice altogether, and joined a fintech company's internal consulting team, essentially a “McKinsey-style” group that solved problems across departments. "I learned about user experience and user interface design. I learned about consultative approaches to problem solving. It was an amazing experience," he says. "It was like an MBA program for me."
All the while, he kept one foot in the immigration tech world, taking on side projects and working for free at early-stage startups. He even found a job on Craigslist for an immigration tech company and shared his LCA compliance idea during the interview to demonstrate his commitment to the space.
By 2016, armed with his fintech experience and a network of immigration lawyers he'd built during and since law school, Zelichenko started making calls. "I had enough people who I could call to just say, 'Hey, I've got this idea. Can you give me 30 minutes of your time to see if I'm crazy or if there's some merit here?'" The validation came quickly. He incorporated LaborLess in 2017 and launched it publicly in 2018.
Roman Zelichenko on Immigration Tech: Industry Trends and Future Outlook
When Zelichenko started creating content about immigration technology, he discovered a vacuum. "Nobody was writing about immigration tech," he recalls. "There were no articles about fundraising. There were very few players in the space." His articles were picked up widely because, as he puts it, "virtually nobody else is talking about this."
Today, the landscape looks dramatically different. More companies than ever are entering the immigration tech space, competition is high, and AI has lowered the barrier to entry for building software. Zelichenko sees this as largely positive for consumers, whether they're attorneys, law firms, or individuals navigating the immigration system.
But he's also candid about the challenges facing new entrants. "There will be a lot of companies built, some of whom will receive millions of dollars from investors, that will struggle to survive," he predicts. "Not because they're not great or they're doing something wrong, but because the market is relatively small and there's increasing competition."
LaborLess has deliberately avoided the venture capital path. "We’ve grown slow and steady," Zelichenko explains. "Knock on wood, every single year has been a growth year from the year we launched." He can envision years of stability or even slight decline without facing pressure from investors demanding exponential growth.
His advice to founders considering the immigration tech space is refreshingly direct. He regularly takes calls from university students and young founders who contact him. Many, he says, are "in a bubble," surrounded by brilliant friends starting companies, convinced that immigration is broken and they have the fix.
"I can give you 45 other companies that have said exactly word for word the same thing," he tells them. "The only reason you think you're innovating is because you're in a bubble. Go spend a little bit of money, go to an AILA conference, talk to more lawyers. Be absolutely sure there are no solutions before you start building one."
Immigration Policy Cycles: Lessons from LaborLess Founder Roman Zelichenko
On the current state of immigration policy, Zelichenko takes the long view, one informed by conversations with practitioners who've been in the field for decades. "When I talk to people who are in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, who've practiced immigration for decades, this is their wisdom for me," he shares. "Everything ebbs and flows. There have been times like this in the industry, and they've gone and then they've come back and then they've gone again."
He points out that even the Obama administration, despite pro-immigration rhetoric, deported a record number of individuals at that time. The lesson? Policy and reality often diverge, and the immigration landscape has always been cyclical.
For immigration attorneys navigating today's challenges, Zelichenko's advice is simple but profound. Speaking from his cabin in upstate New York, surrounded by a foot of snow and chirping birds, he encourages colleagues to "get out and step outside of the chaos and relax and recenter yourself before stepping back into it."
For immigrants themselves facing uncertainty, he acknowledges the difficulty while offering practical perspective. If the stress and uncertainty feel unmanageable, he notes, countries like Canada and Australia as well as others often make their immigration processes more accessible, positioning themselves as alternatives if and especially when America tightens its policies.
The Future of LaborLess and Immigration Compliance Technology
With the H-1B program facing scrutiny from multiple angles, including potential $100,000 fees, the launch of “Project Firewall” by the DOL, etc.,, law firms and corporations are paying closer attention to H-1B compliance than ever.
Because of this, LaborLess, which has been solely focused on H-1B compliance since the beginning, has seen tremendous interest and growth over the past year as a result. Additionally, LaborLess is expanding into PERM compliance automation in 2026 as well, which, Zelichenko says, keeps it focused on the core mission. "Our bread and butter has always been automating forgotten immigration compliance processes," he says. "Being able to provide a service or product for the immigration bar has been most of my career. I started as an immigration lawyer, but most of the time as a professional, I've spent servicing other immigration lawyers and professionals. Going into 2026, I’m excitedto continue to do that."
From a refugee family that looked only forward to a founder building tools that help others navigate the same system his family once faced, Roman Zelichenko's journey embodies the immigrant experience in a uniquely American way. The organization that resettled his family is still operating. The industry he stumbled into through his mother's train commute has become his life's work. And the company he built continues to grow, one compliant H-1B at a time.
Connect with Roman Zelichenko on LinkedIn and learn more about LaborLess and GMI Rocket.
Connect with Roman Zelichenko
