While completing DS-160 for US visa, provide the following security and background information. Provide complete and accurate information to all questions that require an explanation. A visa may not be issued to persons who are within specific categories defined by law as inadmissible to the United States (except when a waiver is obtained in advance).
Are any of the following applicable to you? All of these questions check for the grounds of inadmissibility. If you check ‘Yes’ for any of them, you will be denied the visa. In rare cases, a waiver may be available, and you should talk to a competent immigration lawyer to discuss your case with you to see whether any such waiver may be possible.
For most people, the answers to these questions would be “No”. However, make sure to answer all the questions truthfully, or it may result in a visa ineligibility.
Medical and Health Information
- Do you have a communicable disease of public health significance? Communicable diseases of public significance include: chancroid, gonorrhea, granuloma inguinale, infectious leprosy, lymphogranuloma venereum, infectious stage syphilis, active tuberculosis, and others diseases as determined by the Department of Health and Human Services.
- Do you have a mental or physical disorder that poses or is likely to pose a threat to the safety or welfare of yourself or others?
- Are you or have you ever been a drug abuser or addict?
Criminal Information
- Have you ever been arrested or convicted for any offense or crime, even though you are subject to a pardon, amnesty, or other similar action?
This includes all arrests or detentions, including those at the border and by Customs and Border Patrol. - Have you ever violated, or engaged in a conspiracy to violate, any law relating to controlled substances?
- Are you coming to the United States to engage in prostitution or unlawful commercialized vice, or have you been engaged in prostitution or procuring prostitutes within the past 10 years?
- Have you ever been involved in, or do you seek to engage in, money laundering?
- Have you ever committed or conspired to commit a human trafficking offense in the United States or outside the United States?
- Have you ever knowingly aided, abetted, assisted, or colluded with an individual who has committed or conspired to commit a severe human trafficking offense in the United States or outside the United States?
- Are you the spouse, son, or daughter of an individual who has committed or conspired to commit a human trafficking offense in the United States or outside the United States, and have you, within the last five years, knowingly benefited from the trafficking activities?
- Are you the spouse, son, or daughter of an individual who has been identified by the President of the United States as person who plays a significant role in a severe form of trafficking in persons, and have you, within the last five years, knowingly benefited from the trafficking activities?
- Are you the spouse, son, or daughter of an individual who has violated any controlled substance trafficking law, and have knowingly benefited from the trafficking activities in the past five years?
Security Information
- Do you seek to engage in espionage, sabotage, export control violations, or any other illegal activity while in the United States?
- Do you seek to engage in terrorist activities while in the United States, or have you ever engaged in terrorist activities?
- Have you ever, or do you intend, to provide financial assistance or other support to terrorists or terrorist organizations?
- Are you a member or representative of a terrorist organization?
- Have you ever ordered, incited, committed, assisted, or otherwise participated in genocide?
- Have you ever committed, ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in torture?
- Have you committed, ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in extrajudicial killings, political killings, or other acts of violence?
- Have you ever engaged in the recruitment or the use of child soldiers?
- Have you, while serving as a government official, been responsible for or directly carried out, at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom?
- Have you ever been directly involved in the establishment or enforcement of population controls: forcing a woman to undergo an abortion against her free choice or a man or a woman to undergo sterilization against his or her free will?
- Have you ever been directly involved in the coercive transplantation of human organs or bodily tissue?
Immigration Law Violation Information
- Have you ever sought to obtain or assist others to obtain a visa, entry into the United States, or any other United States immigration benefit by fraud, willful misrepresentation, or other unlawful means?
Miscellaneous Information
- Have you ever withheld custody of a U.S. citizen child outside the United States from a person granted legal custody by a U.S. court?
- Have you voted in the United States in violation of any law or regulation?
- Have you ever renounced United States citizenship for the purpose of avoiding taxation?
