ImmigrationTrackr
April 8, 2015 10:07 PM Subscribe
ImmigrationTrackr
Applying for visas is a pain in the ass - there's a lot of paperwork to deal with, and a ton of personal information to keep track of. So we've created a tracking app to help you manage all of that.
This project was developed in two hackathons (Code for America and Lesbians Who Tech) to create an open-source tool to help visa and immigration paperwork. The hope is that other people will build on this and make a viable tool for public use. Right now it's mostly developed on Rails.
Applying for visas is a pain in the ass - there's a lot of paperwork to deal with, and a ton of personal information to keep track of. So we've created a tracking app to help you manage all of that.
This project was developed in two hackathons (Code for America and Lesbians Who Tech) to create an open-source tool to help visa and immigration paperwork. The hope is that other people will build on this and make a viable tool for public use. Right now it's mostly developed on Rails.
Role: Idea person, wireframes, content, research
This project was posted to MetaFilter by joseph conrad is fully awesome on April 12, 2015: ImmigrationTrackr: helping with the 'massive mountain of bureacracy'
Ok you're officially off the charts amazing, divabat.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 12:53 PM on April 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by Foci for Analysis at 12:53 PM on April 11, 2015 [2 favorites]
This is cool, and as a Rails dev something I'd be interested in contributing to... curious if this is eventually expected to connect to government databases? Or are users generating forms, printing them out, and mailing those, as well as updating application status meta data themselves?
posted by ProtoStar at 10:28 AM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by ProtoStar at 10:28 AM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]
Protostar: Given that we wanted to have this be international, visa requirements & forms change a great deal, and Government websites aren't the most reliable sources of information*, the idea is that the user would have the form handy and use the site to keep track of their progress as well as additional information. For instance, my personal 10-year travel history is too long to key into any form, so what I've done is put it all in a spreadsheet, print that out, and attach it to my application while noting "SEE ATTACHMENT" on the form itself.
A cool idea would be to have it so you can scan the forms in and fill them in using OCR or some such, or if the form already has a way for you to fill it out digitally then you can do that. Some forms you can only fill out on a very specific website (e.g. some US visas), so the app can't really help you there, but it can help with attachments and general tracking.
* The Australian Immigration website had instructions for getting a police record from the FBI that was outdated; if I had followed their instructions my request would have been destroyed. Similarly, they demanded a specific US State police record that turned out to be illegal by US law if used for immigration; I had to email California DOJ to get a special form for my purposes.
posted by divabat at 11:37 AM on April 12, 2015
A cool idea would be to have it so you can scan the forms in and fill them in using OCR or some such, or if the form already has a way for you to fill it out digitally then you can do that. Some forms you can only fill out on a very specific website (e.g. some US visas), so the app can't really help you there, but it can help with attachments and general tracking.
* The Australian Immigration website had instructions for getting a police record from the FBI that was outdated; if I had followed their instructions my request would have been destroyed. Similarly, they demanded a specific US State police record that turned out to be illegal by US law if used for immigration; I had to email California DOJ to get a special form for my purposes.
posted by divabat at 11:37 AM on April 12, 2015
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posted by pyro979 at 9:04 AM on April 9, 2015