I-129 final-stage wait hits 15 days while active backlog jumps 63% in a month
The week of June 1 shows a near-record-low approval median, but the total active pending pool grew from roughly 23,000 to 37,827 cases in just 31 days, driven by a wave of May 2026 filings.
The I-129 final-stage wait landed at 15 days for the week of June 1, just 1 day above last week's 14 and well below the 12-week trailing average of 43 days. That surface calm coexists with a structural shift: the total active pending backlog of unadjudicated I-129 cases reached 37,827 cases as of June 7, up 62.9% over the prior 31 days. Most of that growth traces to May 2026 filings, which added 11,443 still-active cases to the queue. The weekly approval median measures how fast cases are clearing; the backlog measures how many are waiting. Right now, those two numbers are moving in opposite directions.
- The final-stage median wait for I-129 approvals was 15 days the week of June 1, up 1 day from 14 the prior week and well below the 12-week average of 43 days.
- The active pending backlog reached 37,827 cases as of June 7, a 62.9% increase over 31 days, driven largely by 11,443 still-active May 2026 filings.
- The April 2026 filing-month group (age 9 weeks) is 65.8% approved, leaving about 6,375 cases still pending; the March group (age 14 weeks) is 66.9% approved with roughly 9,077 still active.
- RFE (Request for Evidence)-stamped cases cleared in a median of 25 days this week, 1.77x faster than the 45-day median for plain cases, an inversion the data does not fully explain.
- The 8-week regression slope is -7.2 days per week but R² is only 0.21, meaning the downward drift is real but weak; the 4-week forecast carries a band of ~6 to 82 days, too wide to support a single-number projection.
Fifteen days on the surface, sixty-three percent underneath
This week's 15-day median final-stage wait sits near the low end of the 12-week range, 1 day above last week's 14 and well below the 12-week trailing average of 43 days. On its face, the adjudication (the USCIS case decision step where approval, denial, or a request for more information is issued) queue looks calm: cases that did clear last week cleared quickly.
The pending picture tells a different story. Total active I-129 cases reached 37,827 as of June 7, up 62.9% over the prior 31 days. The May 2026 filing-month group accounts for most of that growth, adding 11,368 net active cases over the period. A low weekly approval median and a rapidly growing pending pool are not contradictory, but reading one without the other gives an incomplete picture of where the form stands.
A median that has swung from 13 to 163 days in three months
The 12-week series opens at 163 days in mid-March, collapses to 13 days by late March, holds there through early April, then climbs to 69 days the week of April 20 and reaches 119 days the week of April 27. From early May onward, the median has settled between 13 and 15 days. That sequence covers a 150-day range in about 11 weeks.
The 8-week regression slope is -7.2 days per week, pointing downward, but R² is only 0.21, meaning the linear fit explains about one-fifth of the week-to-week variance. The pattern is classified as noisy and broadly stable rather than a clean trend. The current 15-day reading may reflect a genuine improvement in throughput, or it may reflect the mix of cases that happened to clear last week.
One in three April filers is still waiting
The April 2026 filing-month group, cases filed in April and tracked through this week, sits at age 9 weeks with 65.8% of its 18,947 total cases approved, leaving about 6,375 still active. The March 2026 group is 14 weeks old and 66.9% approved, with roughly 9,077 cases still pending out of 28,181 total. At both ages, more than a third of the original volume has yet to clear.
The May 2026 group is only 5 weeks old and already 45.8% approved out of 21,163 total cases, but 11,443 remain active and account for the largest share of the backlog increase over the past month. These figures are cumulative counts for each filing-month group, not this week's approval flow, so the calm weekly median does not indicate that these pending cases are moving through the queue at the same pace as approvals observed this week.
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