Preliminary I-130 total wait hits 186 days, up 38% from a year ago
An early read on the week of Oct 19 shows the filing-to-approval median 51 days above the same week in 2025, while 773,413 petitions remain pending across all filing months.
A preliminary read on I-130 approvals for the week of Oct 19 puts the median wait from filing to approval at 186 days, down slightly from 197 days the prior week but 51 days above the same week last year (135 days, n=5,857), a 37.8% year-over-year increase. The sample of 2,788 approvals is roughly half the recent weekly norm, so this figure will likely shift as more cases are counted. Twenty-seven percent of approvals this week waited more than a year. Separately, 773,413 cases remain pending across all filing months as of Oct 26, up from 748,794 four weeks earlier; none of the wait figures here describe those pending cases, which have not yet been approved.
- The preliminary total wait median of 186 days for the week of Oct 19 is 38% above the same week last year (135 days), the largest year-over-year gap in the 12-week window.
- The pending backlog stands at 773,413 cases as of Oct 26, up about 24,600 (+3.3%) over the prior 28 days, with new filings continuing to outpace approvals.
- The final-stage wait jumped to 62 days this week from 39 days last week, an outlier reading (z=3.0 against the prior 8-week trailing trend) in a series with a weak fit (R²=0.06), suggesting likely reversion.
- RFE (Request for Evidence) response cases cleared in 19 days, faster than the 47-day median for plain-processing cases, an unusual inversion consistent with a batch of RFE responses from a similar filing period clearing together.
- The June 2026 filing-month group is 14.5% approved at 21 weeks; the July 2026 group is 7.6% approved at 16 weeks, with the large majority of both groups still pending.
186 days: a preliminary read, and what it means
The preliminary 186-day median is an early signal: at 2,788 approvals, this week's sample runs roughly half the pace of a typical recent week, and the figure may revise as more approvals are counted. Even so, the contrast with the same week in 2025 is clear. A year ago the median filing-to-approval wait was 135 days; this week it stands 51 days higher, a 37.8% increase. The distribution is wide: the 25th percentile (p25) fell at 120 days and the 75th percentile (p75) at 388 days, and 27% of approvals this week waited more than a full year from filing.
As of Oct 26, 773,413 I-130 petitions remain pending across all filing months, up from 748,794 four weeks earlier on Sept 28. That broader pending population is a separate count from anything in this week's approvals. Every wait figure in this brief is measured on cases that were approved; none of it describes how long those 773,413 pending cases have been waiting.
A year of wider gaps: how we got here
Over the past 12 weeks, the filing-to-approval median has ranged from 186 days (this week) to 223 days (the week of Aug 17), with no sustained directional move in either direction. The series dipped to 187 days the week of Aug 10, climbed to 223 days by Aug 17, and has oscillated in the 190-to-215-day band through most of September and October. Every reading in this window sits above the corresponding 2025 figure. The week-to-week movement is noisy enough that it does not point to a clear trend; what is consistent is that the year-over-year gap has persisted across the full period.
A one-week spike in final-stage timing
The time from the last status update to approval, a secondary metric that measures only the final leg of processing rather than the full wait from filing, came in at 62 days this week. That is up 22 days from last week's 39 days and 16 days above the 12-week trailing average of 46 days. An outlier flag fired at z=3.0, computed against the prior 8-week trailing mean; against the full 12-week average the reading is still elevated. The 8-week regression that underlies that flag carries an R² of just 0.06, indicating the series is noisy, and single-week readings at this confidence level frequently revert the following week.
Despite the week-over-week rise, 62 days is meaningfully below the same week last year, when the final-stage median was 105 days. Year over year, that is a 41% improvement on this metric. The week-to-week move may reflect the smaller preliminary sample this week as much as any genuine shift in the adjudication (USCIS's case decision step) queue: with roughly half the typical approval volume, who happened to be approved in this narrow window can shift the median more than in a full-size week.
A single elevated week in a noisy series is a reading to track, not a conclusion about USCIS throughput.
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