U.S. State Department to Require 15 Years of Travel History in Immigrant Visa Applications

The U.S. Department of State has submitted a proposal to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to revise the electronic immigrant visa application, Form DS-260 (Application for Immigrant Visa and Alien Registration). This action follows a 60-day comment period that concluded on September 8, 2025.

The new notice was published in the Federal Register on November 19, 2025. A final 30-day public comment period is now open, with comments due by December 19, 2025, before the form is submitted for final approval. The Department of State intends to discontinue the paper version, Form DS-230, which will no longer be renewed effective November 1, 2025. The DS-260 is used by Consular Officers to obtain the information needed to determine the eligibility and classification of an individual seeking an Immigrant Visa (IV) to the United States.

The State Department addressed suggestions from the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and other commenters to enhance the form’s clarity and utility. A key change involves the question on travel history, which has been modified from asking about travel within the last five years to now requiring applicants to detail travel to any country or region, other than the United States, within the last fifteen years.

Additionally, questions concerning family members’ immigration intent will be made more specific, replacing the word “immigrating” with the phrase “applying for a U.S. immigrant visa”. Furthermore, a security question regarding the determination of a frivolous asylum application will be revised to refer to “an immigration judge or Board of Immigration Appeals”, instead of “the Secretary of Homeland Security of the United States”.

The Department acknowledged the difficulty applicants, particularly the elderly, might face in recalling detailed past addresses. A suggestion to add an “unknown” option to the address field was not implemented at this time because past addresses are used for multiple purposes beyond police certificates, including fraud prevention and enhanced vetting.

However, the Department stated it will re-open discussions with vetting partners to determine whether adding an “unknown” checkbox is possible without significantly impacting U.S. national security interests in the future.

More complex suggestions, such as simplifying the language of security questions, improving technical issues like system timeouts and login errors, and revising the language on the signature and submission page, were deferred to a large-scale modernization project due to resource and time constraints in the current renewal cycle.

The Department also declined the suggestion to add an explanatory “overflow” option to the electronic form , stating that the e-form allows applicants to add information where necessary, and they can provide detailed explanations during the required in-person interview.

The notice was used to clarify financial and data privacy issues. The Department assured the public that the cost to process the DS-260 is $94,022,024 in federal government expenditures , not the $156 billion figure cited by one commenter , and clarified that consular fees are set for full cost recovery, resulting in a net cost of $0 to the American taxpayer.

For greater data transparency concerning the eMedical system, the Department is adding a new “Medical Examination Disclosure and Consent” subsection. This language will better explain the role of the Australian Department of Home Affairs (ADHA) and provide data privacy assurances, as ADHA access to medical records is strictly limited to providing technical support to the U.S. government and its designated panel physicians.