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Show HN: Visalist – Find visa requirements for countries around the world

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Re: Show HN: Visalist – Find visa requirements for countries around the world

#191

Post by agapon »

krn wrote: post #134
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do have to be careful and read the fine print. This year, I was turned away at the Belarusian-Lithuanian border (US citizen) because I had read on that Wikipedia page that it was Visa free. In fact, it is only visa free if you arrive via the Minsk airport. Fortunately I was only driving through a tiny part of Belarus on my way to Poland so it was a simple matter of another 30 minutes or so of driving to enter Pol…

To be fair, visa-free entry into Belarus for up to 30 days is a completely new thing[1]. Unlike most visa-free regimes, it's not driven by any international agreements, but rather by a Belarusian initiative to promote tourism in the country. Therefore, they can set their own requirements, and it's still not possible to take a 2-hour train from Vilnius to Minsk without a visa. The entire program can be cancelled at an…

To be fair, Ukraine has the same unilateral visa-free regime for EU (plus some other countries) citizens. But it's not as arbitrary. If you are a citizen of one of the countries you can enter through any legal port of entry.

Edit. I keep forgetting that Ukraine now does have visa free travel with Schengen states.

Re: Show HN: Visalist – Find visa requirements for countries around the world

#192

Post by mattlondon »

Suggestion: The green colours picked for "visa free" and "visa on arrival" is very close. I would recommend that you change the colours to be more obviously different.

I personally found it a bit difficult to tell the difference between green and slightly-darker-green.

Otherwise, very nice apart from the funky scrolling glitching up all over the place.

Re: Show HN: Visalist – Find visa requirements for countries around the world

#193

Post by gandutraveler »

tgamblin wrote: post #74

How do you handle some of the more obscure cases? For example, citizens of some countries, including the US, can do a short, visa-free stay in China if they’re transiting through the major airports ( https://www.travelchinaguide.com/embassy/visa/transit.htm ). I saw Beijing this way coming back to SF from Taiwan. It was a pain to find all the details about how to apply, and a site like this could help people find out…

Another case you could add is for citizens of country A but resident of Country B. For e.g. Indian citizen residing in US or has valid US Visa gets Visa free travel to Mexico and other countries.

Re: Show HN: Visalist – Find visa requirements for countries around the world

#194

Post by crumbshot »

1hakr wrote: post #182
crumbshot wrote: post #180

A non-authoritative source of information that is riddled with adverts. No thank you.

ads are the only ways to maintain such a traffic while keeping it completely free. Do you have any other suggestions?

My only suggestion is for everyone to use an adblocker and starve such parasitic websites out of existence.

Re: Show HN: Visalist – Find visa requirements for countries around the world

#195

Post by chrisseaton »

dorian-graph wrote: post #176

> Australia is part of Australia and New Zealand, Oceania with capital at Canberra. Somewhat concerning to have a mistake of this type on a website like this—or I'm just behind in the news.

What do you think the typo is there?

Re: Show HN: Visalist – Find visa requirements for countries around the world

#197

Post by [deleted] »

agapon wrote: post #191
krn wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, visa-free entry into Belarus for up to 30 days is a completely new thing[1]. Unlike most visa-free regimes, it's not driven by any international agreements, but rather by a Belarusian initiative to promote tourism in the country. Therefore, they can set their own requirements, and it's still not possible to take a 2-hour train from Vilnius to Minsk without a visa. The entire program can be cancelled at an…

To be fair, Ukraine has the same unilateral visa-free regime for EU (plus some other countries) citizens. But it's not as arbitrary. If you are a citizen of one of the countries you can enter through any legal port of entry. Edit. I keep forgetting that Ukraine now does have visa free travel with Schengen states.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Visalist – Find visa requirements for countries around the world

#198

Post by fareesh »

1hakr wrote: post #143
fareesh wrote: post #140

I personally would never use a website like this because I am not going to trust my precious travel plans and legal standing in another country to a non-authoritative website. For my personal comfort, the problem to be solved is officially recognized information presented in a convenient way. In fact, I have noticed that websites like this tend to add to my confusion when they contradict the official forms.

Actually the information is from the official website, infact in the details page you can find link to the offical website. What i'm trying to do here is simplify the visa requirements for everyone.

No the information claims to be sourced from Wikipedia. On comparing the information with the official website, there are numerous places where the information on this website is incomplete or inaccurate.

For example, the visa requirements for India->Italy show no mention of photocopies of US, UK and Schengen visa pages. The requirements do not provide explicit specifications for the photograph (white background). There is no mention of a travel itinerary including a list of other countries that one is intending to visit, which is also a requirement.

The bottom line is that the information is of poor quality by virtue of not being accurate, and nobody takes responsibility for it, which makes it very risky to use when making important plans.

Re: Show HN: Visalist – Find visa requirements for countries around the world

#199

Post by Carpetsmoker »

1hakr wrote: post #143
fareesh wrote: post #140

I personally would never use a website like this because I am not going to trust my precious travel plans and legal standing in another country to a non-authoritative website. For my personal comfort, the problem to be solved is officially recognized information presented in a convenient way. In fact, I have noticed that websites like this tend to add to my confusion when they contradict the official forms.

Actually the information is from the official website, infact in the details page you can find link to the offical website. What i'm trying to do here is simplify the visa requirements for everyone.

Over here: https://visalist.io/new-zealand/visa-requirements/netherland... it says "source: wikipedia", which is hardly "official", and may not be comprehensive.

The Wikipedia page is subtly wrong you get a "visa on arrival", not "visa not required". There are some important details left out too; for example one of the conditions for getting the visa is that you have booked flights out of New Zealand. I've heard stories of people not realizing this and having to book flights on the spot :-(

You can get a 9 month visa quite easily, but you need to apply for it (and then you can enter without flights out of the country).

There are probably many more pages where such details (or even more important details) are lacking; I just chose this one as I recently moved to New Zealand so I know a thing or two about the Visa requirements there.

It might be useful for a quick "hm, I'd like to go somewhere, what are my options?", but I would always check the immigration website for these kinds of requirements/details. And frankly, I don't see what this website adds over Wikipedia.

Re: Show HN: Visalist – Find visa requirements for countries around the world

#200

Post by nathan_f77 »

jlangenauer wrote: post #23

Funnily enough, about 5 years ago, I did pretty much the same thing. It turned out to be a right pain to actually find, and keep all the data up to date. (Comments at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5434186 - the actual site has been taken down)

I was planning to build a visa site as well, and I also wanted to fill in the all the visa application forms online [1]. That's actually one of the main reasons that I built FormAPI [2].

I decided to stop working on this visa list / forms idea. I think I could make a bit money from ads (hotels, airlines, etc.), but I can't think of any subscription models, and I personally wouldn't pay any one-time fees just to fill out some forms. I think most people would rather use a pen than enter their credit card details.

It would also be far too much work to organize all of these application forms and stay up to date with visa requirements. I just wanted some passive income and wasn't ready to schlep [3].

But I think it could be done with VC funding and a team of salespeople and immigration experts. You need people calling or emailing embassies, or visiting them in person, and making sure that they know about these filled-in forms and are willing to accept them. I was also thinking that I would eventually build a SaaS service for every embassy, so that people could apply online and track their applications. Could start with filling out the forms, and then eventually digitize the process and cut out the paper. But I was worried about turning into another online visa agency where I was just a middle-man. That's a service business with low margins, and it would be easy to settle into that and get stuck there.

Anyway, it's a huge project, so it's not something I could do by myself. Also trying to sell software to government and immigration agencies is a really bad idea (from personal experience.) But maybe there's an opportunity here, so let me know if anyone is interested in working on that.

[1] https://www.visaforms.co

[2] https://formapi.io

[3] http://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html

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