Annual research report
2026 U.S. Visa Interview Research Report
What applicant-reported interview data shows about the questions and themes emphasized across major U.S. visa categories.
6,327
U.S.-scoped interview reports
29,116
Officer-question mentions
19,004
Normalized unique wordings
Key findings
Relationship questions are the center of gravity: 35% of categorized question mentions relate to relationships, and “how did you meet” is the single most-reported question corpus-wide (1,200 mentions).
Green Card and Adjustment of Status is the largest cohort in the corpus — 3,535 reports, 56% of the U.S.-scoped sample.
Officer questions are rarer than discussion volume suggests: only 3.0% of 226,549 processed posts contained them.
Question wording is extremely long-tail: 19,004 unique wordings across 29,116 mentions, alongside 5,191 reported pitfalls.
From public discussion to research data
Every figure in this report descends from the same auditable funnel, covering 2024-03 through 2026-07.
226,549
Public posts processed
Across monitored immigration communities
6,744
Posts containing officer questions
3.0% of processed posts
6,327
U.S.-scoped interview reports
Qualifying, privacy-filtered reports
29,116
Officer-question mentions
Retained question instances
19,004
Normalized unique wordings
90.6% of instances matched a normalized topic
Most reported question topics
Corpus-wide topic frequency across all analyzed U.S. reports, with the number of distinct wordings observed per topic.
| # | Topic | Question mentions | Distinct wordings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Relationship questions | 5,550 | 4,759 |
| 2 | Other | 2,851 | 2,678 |
| 3 | How did you meet | 2,226 | 331 |
| 4 | Civics test question | 2,180 | 1,221 |
| 5 | Background questions | 2,106 | 1,921 |
| 6 | Identity verification | 2,024 | 1,714 |
| 7 | Employment questions | 1,495 | 1,257 |
| 8 | Financial questions | 1,209 | 1,101 |
| 9 | Travel purpose questions | 1,203 | 1,078 |
| 10 | Spouse information | 840 | 361 |
| 11 | Current employment | 816 | 231 |
| 12 | Education questions | 807 | 718 |
| 13 | Document verification | 674 | 441 |
| 14 | Intent / ties to home country | 577 | 548 |
| 15 | Background / history question | 565 | 439 |
The most-reported question, by visa category
| Visa group | Most-reported question | Mentions |
|---|---|---|
| F-1 Student Visa | “when did you graduate” | 20 |
| B-1/B-2 Visitor Visa | “what is the purpose of your visit” | 12 |
| H-1B and Employment Visas | “what is your salary” | 31 |
| K-1 Fiancé Visa | “how did you meet” | 22 |
| CR-1/IR-1 Spouse Visa | “how did you meet” | 47 |
| Green Card and Adjustment of Status | “how did you meet” | 1,022 |
| Naturalization (N-400) | “who vetoes bills” | 67 |
Counts are normalized question instances within each category’s analyzed reports.
Headline findings by visa group
F-1 Student Visa
Approximately 440 qualifying reports
53%
Education questions
235+ reports
31%
Financial questions
135+ reports
21%
Employment questions
90+ reports
B-1/B-2 Visitor Visa
Approximately 205 qualifying reports
59%
Travel purpose questions
120+ reports
28%
Current employment
60+ reports
25%
Purpose of visit
50+ reports
H-1B and Employment Visas
Approximately 315 qualifying reports
58%
Employment questions
185+ reports
41%
Current employment
130+ reports
22%
Identity verification
70+ reports
K-1 Fiancé Visa
Approximately 105 qualifying reports
59%
Relationship questions
65+ reports
43%
How did you meet
45+ reports
23%
Spouse information
25+ reports
CR-1/IR-1 Spouse Visa
Approximately 285 qualifying reports
54%
Relationship questions
150+ reports
46%
How did you meet
130+ reports
24%
Identity verification
70+ reports
Green Card and Adjustment of Status
Approximately 3,535 qualifying reports
50%
Relationship questions
1,765+ reports
47%
How did you meet
1,655+ reports
27%
Background questions
950+ reports
Naturalization (N-400)
Approximately 935 qualifying reports
55%
Civics test question
510+ reports
19%
Background questions
175+ reports
16%
Identity verification
145+ reports
Other U.S. Visa Categories
Approximately 620 qualifying reports
32%
Relationship questions
200+ reports
24%
How did you meet
150+ reports
22%
Background questions
135+ reports
How to interpret this report
Findings are observational patterns within a self-selected corpus. Percentages use distinct reports as the denominator and should not be interpreted as government probabilities or predictions.
Suggested citation
Visa Interviews Research. (2026). U.S. Visa Interview Research Release 2026.07.18-us-v1. https://www.visainterviews.com/data/us
Cite, embed, or download this data
Free to reuse with attribution. Embeds and citations link back to the canonical release.
Visa Interviews Research. (2026). U.S. Visa Interview Research (applicant-reported) (Version 2026.07.18-us-v1) [Data set]. VisaMind. https://www.visainterviews.com/data/us
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