My looks, or lack thereof seem to be a significant requirement for dates and even friendship. At least in my experience. Maybe I am reading it wrong, which is entirely possible.

She doesn't talk all day every day. Mostly it is in my evening before work for her or in my morning after she gets home. She will often message during lunch and sometimes during her work day when it is slow.

I don't know how to explain it, we message slowly. Maybe a flurry of messages in 5 minutes and then only one or two the next hour. It feels like we talk a lot even when we don't really. I can reread what we wrote in a morning and it often takes 30 seconds to do it. Weekends are either constant messaging or video chat or pretty much nothing besides saying good morning. She has an office job with a lot of the time it is just copying data from one report and putting it into tax forms. In my field, it takes significant concentration to be productive and I can do multiple things while working, well when I was able to work. She did get some new responsibilities to learn so talk at work has been significantly reduced.

What for? I get the impression she is very bored and lonely. It is all moot, until or unless she gets a visa and she wants to wait until spring so she can make the trip and not get stuck there. If she doesn't get a visa it is just an online friendship with no risk. You are probably right that no one would be interested in me without an ulterior motive.