I've done visas for many countries in my life

US one is the worst I had to deal with

and it must be consistent across countries as they have the same process

exploring new frontiers in tech, ai, crypto, farcaster DAU since 2023, product designer since 2018, portfolio → /basedstudio

their systems are all like from like 2000s

even small but still highly visited countries like Thailand have 100x better experience

if you want your appointment sooner there are "hackers" who book them upfront or smth and charge more for that obviously

then you have to print a bunch of docs that is just paper and won't reflect reality at the moment you get to that interview

there's a lot more going on here but I leave it for now

to be specific here in Lisbon you can only schedule appointment 2 months in advance

you learn that after filing a form from 2000s that asks your google+ and myspace social media profiles

that form logs you out every 5 minutes without telling you, not saving anything

especially given that US has trillions of $ worth of software companies and could've bought and developed something with google etc.

but even a small team funded with a couple millions per year could've handled it 100x better