After hearing the same question online and in expat communities too many times: “Has anyone been to <COUNTRYNAME> to get a visa? How long did it take to get your passport back and how easy was it?”. I decided to do bring together all the reviews into one place.
At the end of 2018, I created a simple form that allows everyone to review their experience getting a visa (whichever type of U.S. visa you got) and what they thought of the US Embassy or US Consulate. It asks some simple questions about how you rated it, how long it took to get your passport back, and any tips or tricks you want to give to the people reading at home.
Since then, just over a year later, we've had 299 visa reviews submitted!! This is a sensational amount of information that together forms a great picture of visa locations around the world.
Here's what I've learned.
US Visa Location Trends
- The top 7 reviews locations have stayed pretty consistent (and switch around a bit):
- London
- Barbados
- Perth
- Paris
- Melbourne
- Iceland
- Sydney
- Canadian consulates become much less reliable and less frequently visited throughout the summer months (they take on much fewer interviews) and have not improved throughout winter
- The Bahamas has recently become much more difficult to navigate recently
- Many locations get great reviews but are rarely visited (e.g. Athens, and San Jose)
- Lima seems the least reliable from 2 reviews
How to read all the reviews
You can click on any of the locations to open each individual review and read all of them for yourself.
By default, the list is ordered and colored by “Right Now” which uses a special method of taking into account review score, turnaround times, wait-times, and freshness of reviews. You can change it at any time.
How to submit your own review
I'd LOVE for you to help keep the information as up-to-date as possible. HELP ME GET OVER 300 REVIEWS!
All of this information is only here because of your help, so please send your reviews in, it only takes 60 seconds to write a review. If you're not ready to do that yet (because you haven't got your visa yet) then click here to set a reminder for when you get your visa to come back here!
Submit your own visa location review
This should take some of the guesswork out of the process and ensure that wherever you go, you’ll know how long to leave between your flights, and how difficult you can expect the process to be.
If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them in the comments below!
Happy traveling and good luck.
