Methodology
Methodology
Issuance counts: one month at a time
Each monthly table lists, for every post (or nationality) and visa class, the number of visas issued in that month. The Department states that from FY2020 its monthly reports should not be aggregated, because later status changes are not reflected in them. This site therefore never adds monthly reports together. The latest month (September 2025) is shown on its own; the comparison figure is the same month a year earlier (September 2024); ranks and shares among posts, nationalities and classes are computed within one month's table; and month tables and charts show each report as its own value.
Every yearly figure is the Department's own annual table, the NIV detail table of the Report of the Visa Office (nationality by class, with the Department's worldwide total row), labelled "FY2024, Report of the Visa Office" or the year concerned. The Department does not publish an annual table by post, and the immigrant annual tables are not yet carried here, so post pages and immigrant class pages show the latest month and say that annual totals are published separately.
Monthly tables before October 2022 are published only as PDFs; they were converted to text once and the rows kept as snapshots. A handful of posts appear under two spellings across the years (for example "Chennai (Madras)" and "Chennai"); these are merged under the Department's current spelling. Older symbol spellings in the annual table (B-1,2; H-1B) are mapped to the current monthly-table form.
Class groups
For charts, nonimmigrant classes are grouped by symbol family: visitors (B1, B2, B1/B2 and the border-crossing-card combinations), students and exchange visitors (F, M, J), temporary workers (H, L, O, P, Q, E, R, TN, TD, I, CW), diplomatic and official (A, G, C3, NATO), transit and crew (C1, C1/D, C2, D) and other (K, T, U, S, N). Immigrant classes are grouped as immediate relatives, family preferences, employment preferences, diversity and special immigrants. The groups are this site's reading aid; the Department's symbols and descriptions are shown unchanged on every table.
Ranks and shares
A post's rank for a class is its position among all posts that issued at least one visa of that class in the latest monthly report, by count. A nationality's or class's annual rank is its position in the latest Report of the Visa Office table. Shares are the count divided by the worldwide total in the same table. Medians are across posts or nationalities with a non-zero count in that table. None of these is a rating.
Seasonality
For each complete calendar year, each month's count is expressed relative to that year's median month (100 = the median month); the calendar heat shows the median of those indices across years. No annual totals are formed. Years with a missing month, or a median month under 10 issuances, are excluded.
Wait times
The Department's Global Visa Wait Times table is read once a day; when it has changed, the reading is stored with its date. Readings from before 2025 give the next available appointment in calendar days; from 2025 the Department publishes half-month steps ("2 months", "< 0.5 month") and, for B1/B2, the average wait experienced in the previous month. This site stores every reading in days (a month as 30 days, "< 0.5 month" as 7 days) and displays it in the Department's format for that reading. The three-step colour band (under two months, two to six months, over six months) is this site's presentation. The Department's own caveats about the estimates appear on every page that shows them. Historical readings before this site began were seeded from the Internet Archive's captures of the same page, one per month.
Refusal rates
The adjusted refusal rate is the Department's own annual figure for B visas by nationality, published as one table per fiscal year and reproduced without change. Region and world medians are computed across the nationalities in that year's table, using the regions of the Report of the Visa Office. The Department publishes no refusal rate by post or for other classes, and this site does not estimate one.
Visa Bulletin
For each bulletin since October 2015 (when the dates-for-filing chart was introduced), the family-sponsored and employment-based charts are parsed into a value per category and chargeability area: a date, "C" (current) or "U" (unavailable). Month-to-month movement is computed only between two dated values; a change to or from C or U is counted as an advance or retrogression but has no day count. "Net movement, twelve bulletins" is the day difference between the value twelve bulletins ago and the latest value where both are dates. Categories that the Department has split (EB-5 set-asides, EB-3 other workers, EB-4 religious workers) are kept separate under the labels used in recent bulletins. Nothing on the site projects a future bulletin.
Diversity Visa
Selectee counts are read from the Department's "selected entrants" page for each program year. The share is the country's count divided by the sum of all countries on that page. Names are not published by the Department and are not held here.
Thresholds and indexing
Every post, nationality and class in the tables gets a page, so that links from a month or class page always resolve. Pages for nationalities and classes with fewer than 100 issuances in the latest Report of the Visa Office year (or, where no annual figure exists, fewer than 10 in the latest month), posts with fewer than 10 issuances in the latest month, bulletin series with fewer than 24 bulletins, and post-month pages with fewer than 100 issuances are marked "noindex" so search engines do not list them. Post-month pages exist for the last 24 months where the post had at least 10 issuances.
Rebuilds
The site is rebuilt daily. Site generated 30 Sep 2026; issuance data through 30 Sep 2025; wait times read 1 Jul 2026; latest bulletin July 2026.