About Fori

Fori publishes plain-English guides for people building a new life in the United States. No sponsors, no affiliate links, no lead-selling. Just the explanation somebody should have handed you at the airport.

Why Fori exists

Search for almost any practical question a newcomer has and you will find three kinds of result: a law firm's landing page, a comparison site earning a commission on whatever it recommends, and a government page written for people who already understand the system.

What is missing is the middle. Not advice about your specific case, and not a legal citation — just an honest explanation of how a process works, in the order you will meet it, written by somebody who assumes you are intelligent and new rather than the other way round.

That gap is what Fori fills. The name means two things at once: for I, for us — for the person doing this alone and for everybody who has done it before — and fori, the Latin plural of forum, the public square where people told each other how things actually worked.

Who this is for

• People who have just arrived on a work, study or family visa
• Overseas workers and their families who have moved to the United States
• People a year or two in who keep hitting the same wall: we need to see US credit history
• Anyone helping a parent, spouse or sibling who is about to arrive

How we make money, and what that means

Fori is funded by advertising. Ads on this site are served by third-party ad networks, they are labelled, and they are kept out of the way of the text.

Here is what we do not do, and will not do:

• We do not accept sponsored posts or paid placements in our guides.
• We hold no affiliate or referral relationships with banks, card issuers, transfer services, landlords or lenders. If we name a category, we earn nothing from your choice within it.
• We do not collect or sell your details as leads to attorneys, brokers or agents.
• Advertisers have no influence over what we publish, and no advance sight of it.

This is deliberate. The moment a guide about sending money home earns a commission on one provider, the guide is worth nothing to you.

Who writes these guides

Fori is written by a small editorial team rather than by named columnists. That is a deliberate choice: nothing here rests on anybody's personal authority, and every claim is meant to be checkable against the agency that actually sets the rule. Each guide ends with a list of the primary sources we used, so you never have to take our word for anything.

Between us we have been through most of this: the SSA office queue, the first rejected rental application, the tax return nobody warned us about. That experience decides what we write about. The primary sources decide what we say.

What we are not

Fori is an independent publisher. We are not a law firm, a bank, a tax preparer, a licensed adviser or a government agency, and we are not affiliated with or endorsed by any US government body. Nothing on this site is legal, immigration, tax or financial advice, and reading it does not create any professional relationship.

Rules, fees and processing times change constantly. Every guide links to the primary government source behind it — always confirm the current position there before you act, and take professional advice on anything that affects your status or a significant sum of money.

Tell us when we are wrong

We will get things wrong. When we do, we want to know quickly and we correct in the open rather than quietly editing. Our editorial policy explains how we research, source and correct, and the contact page is the fastest way to reach a person.