Methodology — I-140 processing times

Population

Only I-140 petitions filed online (receipt prefix IOE). The receipt date is USCIS’s actual receipt date when we captured the “Case Was Received” status. For cases we first saw already in process, the receipt date is estimated to the case’s filing block month (the typical filing month for petitions with a nearby receipt number). Paper filings are not included.

Metric

Processing time = decision date − receipt date, in calendar days. The decision date is the first day a case reached an approved or denied status in the public USCIS case-status history.

What counts as “decided”

A case is decided when it reaches a final status — approved (e.g. “Case Was Approved”) or denied/rejected. Pending cases, open RFEs and withdrawals are excluded. Slow cases that are still pending don’t enter the calculation, which is why we use percentiles, not an average (the average would understate the true time because of this censoring).

Statistics & windows

• Median (p50) and 80th percentile (p80) of days to decision.
• Global figure: cases decided in the last 6 months (rolling).
• Trend: the last 12 months, grouped by the month of decision.
• Date outliers (negative, or over 2,000 days) are discarded as data errors.

Minimum sample

Any segment (the global figure or a given month) with fewer than 30 decided cases is not published — it’s shown as insufficient data instead. Figures are recomputed daily.

Limitations

This is an estimate from public case-status data for online filings, not a guarantee, not legal advice, and not affiliated with USCIS. Category-level figures (EB-1/2/3/NIW) are not shown until enough self-reported cases exist to be meaningful, and would be labelled as a self-selected sample. Your individual case may differ.