How We Research & Verify
Every income threshold, visa fee, and processing time on this site traces back to an official government or consulate source. Here is exactly how we find, verify, and maintain it.
Our sourcing standard
Relocation decisions involve your money, your taxes, and your legal right to live in another country. We treat that seriously. The core rule behind every page on VISAPrep is simple:
If a number can't be traced to an official government portal, consulate website, or published legal text, it does not go on the page. We do not copy figures from other relocation blogs, forum posts, or AI-generated summaries.
When you read a financial requirement in one of our guides, you can click through to the official source it came from. We would rather show you the primary document than ask you to take our word for it.
The source hierarchy we use
For every requirement, we work down this order and stop at the highest-authority source that answers the question:
- Official immigration & consulate portals — the immigration ministry or the destination country's consulate for your origin country (requirements often differ by consulate).
- Published legal & regulatory texts — the actual decree, royal decree, or law that sets a threshold (for example, the regulation that fixes a minimum-income figure).
- Official statistics & wage authorities — for figures tied to a national minimum wage or cost index that updates each year.
- Tax authority & treaty texts — for how pensions, savings, and worldwide income are taxed after you move.
Other relocation blogs, Reddit threads, Facebook-group comments, cached pages of unknown age, and AI chatbots. These are useful for finding leads — never as the source of a published figure.
How we verify a financial threshold
Income and savings requirements are where most relocation content goes stale, because they are pegged to figures that change every year. A few examples of how we tie each one to its real, updatable source:
The D7 passive-income threshold tracks the Portuguese national minimum wage, which the government raises by decree each January. We re-check the current minimum wage at the start of every year and update the derived single, couple, and family figures.
Spain's non-lucrative and digital-nomad income floors are multiples of the IPREM and SMI indices published by the Spanish government. We verify the current index value and recompute, rather than copy a number from last year's guide.
Proof-of-funds figures (for example, the single-applicant amount) come straight from the official IRCC settlement-funds table, which is revised yearly. We cite the table's effective date so you know how current it is.
Where a consulate enforces an unofficial figure that is higher than the legal floor (this is common), we say so plainly and show both numbers, so you are not caught out at the appointment.
How often we update
🔄 Annual review (every January)
- Minimum wages, IPREM/SMI, UMA, and settlement-fund tables all reset at the start of the year.
- We review every guide affected by a yearly figure and update it.
- The schema
dateModifiedand the visible "Last verified" date are both refreshed.
⚡ Event-driven updates
- When a law or visa rule changes mid-year, we update the affected guides as soon as we confirm it against the official text.
- Recent examples: new tax-treaty terms, a visa route opening or closing, a fee schedule change.
- We note what changed and when, so returning readers can see it.
The “Last verified” date
Every corridor and visa page shows a Last verified [Month Year] date near the top. It means a human re-checked the key figures on that page against their official sources on that date — not that the page was merely re-published or auto-stamped. If a date looks old, treat the figures with extra caution and verify directly with the consulate before you rely on them.
Help us stay accurate
Rules change, and consulates sometimes update a requirement before it appears anywhere official. If you spot a figure that no longer matches what an official source or consulate tells you, please tell us.
Email [email protected] with the page and the figure. We verify every report against the primary source and fix confirmed errors quickly — usually within a few days.
What we are — and what we are not
VISAPrep is an independent, free reference site. We are not a government agency, a law firm, or an immigration consultancy, and we are not affiliated with any consulate or embassy. Nothing on this site is legal or immigration advice. Our guides are a well-sourced starting point to help you understand the process and prepare — the official consulate is always the final authority on your application.
Learn more about who we are, or read our Privacy Policy.