Sources & Methodology

Every answer on ImmiHub links directly to where it came from and shows when it was last checked. Rather than presenting all sources as equally authoritative, we tier them so you can judge how much weight to give each one at a glance.

Tier 1 — Official

Government sources: USCIS, the State Department (including the monthly Visa Bulletin), and the Department of Labor. These are the closest thing to a primary source for US immigration rules, and where policy questions should ultimately be confirmed.

Tier 2 — Attorney / institution

Immigration law firm publications (for example, Murthy Law Firm) and university international-student office (ISO) pages. These are written by professionals or institutions with subject-matter expertise, but they are not primary sources and can reflect a particular firm's or school's interpretation.

Tier 3 — Community anecdote

Forum discussions — Reddit and similar communities — reflecting individual experiences. These are useful for understanding what other people in a similar situation encountered, but they are not official policy and can be outdated, jurisdiction-specific, or simply wrong. Every answer sourced this way is labeled “Community anecdote” rather than “verified,” and we deliberately avoid using forum posts as the sole source for factual claims about current rules where an official source exists instead.

How tiering works

The tier badge shown on each answer is computed automatically from the source domain (see getSourceTier() in the codebase) — official government domains, then a curated community-domain list, with everything else defaulting to the attorney/institution tier. This keeps the label consistent with the actual link rather than a manually-set flag that could drift out of sync.

Corrections

Spot something outdated or mis-sourced? Email hello@codebead.com or use the “Submit a question” form on any hub page — corrections are reviewed the same way new questions are.

See also our full disclaimer and About ImmiHub.