Immigration Client Intake Form: What to Ask (Template)

A good immigration intake form asks just enough to tell a real case from a tire-kicker, and not one field more.

Every extra question costs you completions.

The template below is organized the way a working form should branch: a general block every prospect answers, then case-specific blocks for family, employment, asylum, citizenship by descent, and investor prospects. Each group carries a one-line note on what it actually screens for, so you can lift the questions that match the visas your firm takes and drop the rest rather than copy the whole thing blind.

Immileads is a lead generation service, not a law firm, and does not provide legal advice.

How to use this template

Build the form to branch. A prospect should answer the general block, then see only the segment block that fits their situation, never the full list. That keeps the form short for each person while the filtering still happens behind the scenes, which is what protects your completion rate.

Order matters too. Identity and situation first. Capacity-to-pay questions last. Those are the ones people abandon a form over if they hit them cold.

The whole form is doing one job: triage. It decides whether an inquiry is worth a consultation, not what happens in the consultation. Ask too much and prospects bail. Ask too little and you pay to sort junk from real cases by hand.

The three things every branch needs to establish are simple:

1. Can they legally qualify?
2. Is it a case you take?
3. Can they proceed?

Everything below is built around those three.

General block (every prospect)

Ask these of everyone, before the form branches:

• Full name
• Email address
• Phone number, with country code, and whether WhatsApp reaches them there
• Preferred language
• Country of citizenship, and the country they currently live in
• Destination country
• Which best describes your situation? (family · work or employment · investment · asylum or protection · citizenship through ancestry · general relocation.) This single answer routes the prospect into the right block below.
• Are you 18 or older?
• When are you hoping to move or file? (just researching · within 3 months · 3-6 months · 6-12 months · 12+ months)
• May we contact you by phone, text, and email about your inquiry?

Why these qualify: origin and destination plus the situation selector do the first cut. They match the prospect to a segment and confirm you serve that route. The age question is the basic legal-eligibility gate. Timeline separates someone ready to act from someone months out, which tells intake how hard to push. The contact-consent question is both a courtesy and a compliance basic. Capture it explicitly.

Family-based block

• Which relationship is the petition based on? (spouse · fiancé(e) · parent · child · sibling)
• Has a petition already been filed for this case?
• Is the sponsoring relative a citizen or a permanent resident?
• Where is the beneficiary now: inside or outside the destination country?
• Can the sponsor meet the income requirement for an affidavit of support?

Why these qualify: relationship type and whether a petition exists tell you immediately whether this is your case type. A marriage-only practice can drop sibling petitions here. Sponsor status and location shape the route (adjustment versus consular processing). The income question is the capacity gate: a family case that cannot clear the affidavit-of-support threshold is not a case yet.

Employment-based block

• What is the employment route? (sponsored work visa · labor certification (PERM) · self-petition such as extraordinary ability or a national interest waiver)
• Do you have a job offer or a sponsoring employer lined up?
• Your highest qualification, field, and years of experience
• Current immigration status, if you are already in the destination country
• Approximate salary or offered salary

Why these qualify: the route and the presence of a sponsor decide case type. A practice that only files O-1s is not handed labor-certification inquiries, and the reverse holds too. Qualification and salary are the eligibility and capacity checks. An employment matter with no genuine route to the job or credential behind it is not going to move forward.

Note that a form built around a case-type cluster ("high-qualification employment") rather than a single visa code reaches more of the right prospects. See employment immigration leads for why.

Asylum / protection block

Keep this block short and low-friction. The population is sensitive, and a long form here suppresses the genuine claims along with the weak ones.

• Are you currently in removal or deportation proceedings? (distinguishes affirmative from defensive)
• Have you been in the destination country for more than one year?
• Country of origin
• Briefly, what is the basis of your fear of returning?
• Are family members included in the claim?

Why these qualify: proceedings status sets the case posture (affirmative versus defensive). The one-year question flags the filing deadline your firm needs to know about immediately. Country of origin and the basis of the claim help you forward only the people whose described circumstances could genuinely support a protection case, instead of ordinary immigration questions dressed up as asylum. See asylum leads for how sensitive screening shapes this segment.

Citizenship-by-descent block

• Through which ancestor do you claim? (parent · grandparent · great-grandparent)
• The ancestor's country of citizenship or birth
• Which program are you pursuing? (Italian jure sanguinis · Irish Foreign Births Register · Polish confirmation · German restoration · other)
• Can you get hold of the birth, marriage, and death records for every generation linking you to that ancestor?
• Has anyone else in your family already secured this citizenship?

Why these qualify: which ancestor and how many generations back decide whether the prospect clears a program's eligibility limits. The program answer confirms it is a line your firm actually files. The records question is what separates a real file from wishful thinking. Descent cases are won on documents, so a prospect who cannot assemble the vital records has a research project rather than a case. A relative who has already obtained the citizenship is a strong sign the chain holds together. More on the segment in citizenship by descent leads.

Investor block

• Which route interests you? (E-2 · EB-5 · a golden-visa program (Portugal, Greece, and similar) · another route)
• Approximately how much are you able to invest? (offer bracketed ranges rather than an open field)
• Can you document the source of those funds?
• Are you set on one destination country, or comparing several?
• How soon are you looking to invest?

Why these qualify: program and investable amount are the core capacity checks. A golden-visa entry threshold and an EB-5 capital requirement are very different numbers, and the bracketed ranges spare a high-net-worth prospect from typing figures into a web form. Source-of-funds readiness screens for a case that can actually clear diligence. Destination flexibility is a useful tell: most investors are still weighing programs, so a form open to several routes catches them earlier and cheaper than one demanding a single visa code. See investor visa leads.

A note on relocation and general movers

Broad relocation prospects (digital-nomad, retirement, or "we want to move but haven't chosen where") usually do not need a separate block. Route them through the general block's destination and timeline questions plus a single capacity question calibrated to the route (a pension floor for a retirement move, a baseline remote salary for a nomad route). Let the consultation sort the specifics.

What to leave off the form

Resist the urge to front-load the consultation. Children's birthdates, a full immigration history, prior denials, exact document inventories: all of it belongs in the call, not the form.

Those questions crush completion and do nothing to help you decide whether the inquiry is worth a call in the first place. The form filters. The consultation goes deep. Keep the two jobs separate and both work better.

Once the form is doing its job, the leads it produces still have to be worked fast and followed up for months. That is where speed to lead and the four jobs of your intake stack come in. The segment a prospect selects also drives what their lead is worth: each visa type carries its own economics, laid out in what lawyers pay for immigration leads. For the full picture of how these questions map to qualified, exclusive leads, see our guide to immigration lawyer leads.

FAQ

What should an immigration intake form include?

A short general block every prospect answers (name, contact details, language, countries of origin and destination, age, timeline, and consent to be contacted), followed by a branch of case-specific questions for their segment: family, employment, asylum, citizenship by descent, or investor. Each branch should establish three things: whether the prospect can legally qualify, whether it is a case type your firm takes, and whether they can realistically fund or proceed with it. Detailed case facts belong in the consultation, not the form.

How many questions should an intake form have?

As few as it takes to separate a real case from a tire-kicker, and no more. Every extra field lowers completion, so the working rule is to ask only what you need to filter, then stop. Dynamic branching keeps the form short for each person: a prospect sees the general block plus one segment branch, never the whole list. In practice that is usually eight to twelve questions per prospect, not thirty.

Should an immigration intake form ask about ability to pay?

Yes, but indirectly and calibrated to the case type. A minimum income or pension for a retirement or family route. An investable amount for an investor route. A qualification or salary level for an employment route. The point is not to collect financial statements on a web form. It is to filter out inquiries with no realistic path to funding the case, so your intake team spends its time on prospects who can actually proceed.