The backwardness is not just symbolic--the video was not far off in depicting actual USCIS infrastructure and internal procedures. It looks like the offices you'd have a green card interview in, making me think someone involved in making the video had some experience trying to navigate the system. And I've definitely had some of those frustrating experiences at the window, even if there is a slot at the bottom of most of them.

I have to add that the Garden City USCIS office recently advised local immigration practitioners not to mail documents to its office because of the high likelihood they would be misdirected or lost. They advised people not to trust the office's own internal mail system but rather to bring documents in in person. I found this to be true recently when I mailed requested documents in before the deadline but USCIS said they never got them. Luckily I have the FedEx tracking documents to show the documents were signed for at Garden City before the deadline. Now the case is stuck in administrative limbo until USCIS bothers to correct its own error. Cases like this are shockingly common. It's like living in a Soviet satellite state circa 1972 or something. You get the inefficiency of a federal bureaucracy with the added disadvantage of being relegated to the margins in terms of funding and resources. Kafkaesque, you might say.