Buziuk: AI supports intake and administration
A community interest company (CIC) is using artificial intelligence (AI) to help it provide pro bono advice to people seeking global talent visas to come to the UK.
Hleb Buziuk, the director of FairGo [1], said AI was used to “reduce administrative friction and not to provide professional judgement”.
An IT specialist, Mr Buziuk said he came to the UK from Belarus in 2023 on a five-year global talent visa. Having grown up in Minsk, he was working at the time as an analyst in the financial sector.
After trying but getting nowhere with paid consultants, he handled his global talent application by himself and, after a year, obtained a visa.
“The process can be opaque, and I understand how it can seem unclear and illogical to people,” he explained.
Wanting to help others in his position, Mr Buziuk began sharing resources before he left Belarus in 2022 and started building a community in 2023. He set up a pro bono clinic for people wanting to get global talent visas the following year.
FairGo was launched as a CIC in 2025. Mr Buziuk said the clinic has helped over 1,000 people in the past 18 months.
FairGo tried to help “everyone who contacts us” and AI could be very useful in working out the kind of help they needed, whether it required a face-to-face meeting, a remote consultation or some guidance.
AI could also help in sending people “in the correct direction” and providing the web links they need, often “more effectively” than humans. “AI supports intake and administration. It doesn’t make decisions or give advice.”
FairGo has a “community” AI bot, which “handles routine questions, points members to relevant guides and resources, and frees up advisers to focus on complex cases”.
FairGo also provides AI tools to make complex immigration rules easier to navigate for non-governmental organisations and others, and help them deal with enquiries.
Mr Buziuk said he funded the CIC himself. His paid-for work is as a freelance immigration adviser regulated by the Immigration Advice Authority, working for companies.
This involves advising professional people from all over the world on global talent and other kinds of visas.
He devotes at least 20 hours a week to FairGo, where he is joined by four other volunteer immigration advisers who work for around 10 hours a week – from India, Poland, Qatar and East Asia.
“I have never had to ask anyone for help. If you do something that is very useful to people, volunteers will come to you.”
Mr Buziuk said that when his global talent visa expired, he would be applying for indefinite leave to remain in the UK and then for citizenship.
His aim was for FairGo to become a charity, possibly this year, so it could raise funds and expand its work. It keeps overheads low by not having an office.