Passage — the paperwork should not be the thing that stops you.
Free navigation tools, plain-language guides, and eligibility-filtered scholarship matching for immigrant, international, TD, F-1 and undocumented students. When a question needs a lawyer, Passage refers you to one instead of guessing.
Miftah Foundation is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. Passage provides general information and referrals only. Immigration outcomes depend on individual facts — consult a licensed immigration attorney or a DOJ-accredited representative before acting. Find free and low-cost help at immigrationadvocates.org/legaldirectory.
The Problem
The information exists. It just costs $400 an hour.
A student on a dependent visa finds out at nineteen that their status has an age cliff. Another discovers in April that the scholarship they qualified for closed in January, because nobody told them citizenship was not a requirement. A third does not apply anywhere at all, because every form asks a question they are afraid to answer.
None of this is hidden. It is spread across federal regulations, campus offices, PDFs and forum threads, and the people who can assemble it into an answer charge by the hour. The students who most need it are the least able to pay for it.
What It Is
Maps of the system, and a phone number for the parts we can't map.
Plain-language guides and timeline tools
What the common student status pathways actually involve, in order, with the deadlines that matter and the ones that do not. Written for someone reading it at midnight, not for someone billing for it.
Eligibility-filtered scholarship matching
Most scholarship lists waste a student's time by showing awards they cannot receive. Passage filters on the fields that actually disqualify people — citizenship, residency, status, institution — so what's left is worth an evening.
Referral, every time it matters
Anything that depends on an individual's specific facts goes to a licensed immigration attorney or a DOJ-accredited representative. Passage keeps a live list of free and low-cost providers and hands students to them.
Career and application navigation
Which employers sponsor, what work authorization questions on applications mean, how to read a job posting's status requirements. General information about how the process works, not advice about a specific case.
How It Works
Four moves, and one of them is always "hand off."
Orient
A student answers a few structural questions about where they are. No names, no A-numbers, no documents.
Read
They get the guides and timeline tools relevant to their situation, in plain language, free, with no account required.
Match
Scholarships are filtered against their real eligibility, so the list they get is short and actually applicable.
Refer
Anything fact-specific goes to a licensed attorney or DOJ-accredited representative, with the free and low-cost options named first.
Who It's For
Named plainly.
International and dependent-status students
F-1, TD and similar. People whose right to stay has a date on it and whose plans have to be built around that date.
Undocumented students
Who need to know what is genuinely available to them, and who deserve information that does not require them to identify themselves to get it.
First-generation immigrant students
Whose families cannot walk them through a system nobody in the household has been through either.
The Hard Line
Where Passage stops, and why it stops there.
Immigration advice from a non-attorney is unauthorized practice of law. For immigration specifically it also carries federal penalties, and the people harmed are the students. So the boundary is drawn early and enforced everywhere, not just in a footer.
- No advice about your specific case, ever. Passage will not tell you what to file, when to file it, or what your chances are. It will tell you how the process generally works and who is qualified to answer that question for you.
- No form preparation. Passage does not fill out, review or submit immigration forms on anyone's behalf.
- No document collection. Passage does not want your passport, your I-20, your A-number or your immigration file, and will not store them.
- No representation. Nobody at Miftah Foundation appears for anyone before USCIS, an immigration court, or any agency.
- No prediction of outcomes. Outcomes depend on individual facts. Anyone who promises you one is a warning sign, including us.
- Volunteers are trained on this boundary before they talk to a single student, and the disclaimer goes on every guide, every page and every email, not just this one.
Miftah Foundation is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. Passage provides general information and referrals only. Immigration outcomes depend on individual facts — consult a licensed immigration attorney or a DOJ-accredited representative before acting. Find free and low-cost help at immigrationadvocates.org/legaldirectory.
Honest Status
What's real, and what isn't.
What's real
The tooling exists and runs. A visa timeline planner and a scholarship-matching engine were both built and used — the matcher has surfaced 198 eligibility-filtered scholarship packets for a single student. The founder is on TD status himself and has been through the age cliff, the income restrictions and the F-1 transition question in person.
What isn't
Passage has served zero students. No guide has been published under the Miftah name, no referral relationships are in place with legal providers, no volunteers are trained, and the parent organization is not incorporated. The 198 figure is a tool output for one person, not a program result.
Year-one targets (targets, not results)
- Target: published plain-language guides covering the most common student status pathways.
- Target: formal referral relationships with at least two free or low-cost legal providers.
- Target: students reaching a filed application or a funded scholarship — the only outcome that counts, measured at the finish line rather than at the click.
Get Involved
What would actually help.
An immigration attorney or DOJ-accredited representative willing to take referrals. A campus office willing to point students here. Those are the two things that make Passage real.
Miftah Foundation is not yet incorporated and has not applied for recognition of exemption under section 501(c)(3). No application is pending. Contributions are not tax-deductible.