I-130 Week 18 Median Jumps 24 Days on Thin Sample, Not a Trend Signal

The I-130 median (the 50th percentile, or midpoint, of the final-stage wait from last reported status to approval) rose from 68 days in Week 17 to 92 days in Week 18, a +24-day, +35.1% one-week move. The outlier_week_high anomaly flag fired at z=3.56, computed against the prior 4-week trailing mean, which is roughly 1.5 standard deviations above the 2.0 threshold that triggers the flag. The weekly sample fell to 1,669 approved cases, compared with 3,854 to 4,701 in Weeks 13 through 17. That sample compression is the primary mechanical driver: when fewer cases clear in a given week, the mix of which cases happen to reach approval is less representative of the broader pipeline, producing wider swings in the median.

The trailing 8-week pattern is labeled noisy_stable: the slope is -0.8 days per week, and the R² of 0.04 means the regression line explains almost none of the week-to-week variation. The 12-week range runs from 68 to 156 days, so 92 days sits in the middle of observed territory. Recent weeks (W13 through W17) clustered between 68 and 80 days, making the current reading look large by comparison, but the broader 12-week window, including the 156-day reading in W07, provides the more complete frame. This week's 92-day reading is a 3.56-sigma outlier tied to a low-volume week, consistent with measurement noise rather than a policy shift. The 8-week trend remains flat, and the median will likely settle as approval volume normalizes.

The uneven_centers anomaly fired at a value of 65.03 this week. IOE, the electronic-filing pathway, accounts for 1,656 of 1,669 approvals (99.2% of this week's sample) at a median of 91 days. The National Benefits Center (MSC) shows 13 cases at 120 days, and SRC shows 15 cases at 153 days. Because SRC and MSC each carry fewer than 50 cases, their medians are highly volatile and should not be treated as reliable estimates of those centers' throughput. The center spread is technically anomalous but aligns with the small-n noise at SRC and MSC rather than a meaningful divergence in operational pace; the case mix differs across centers as well, which makes direct comparison structurally limited.

For practical purposes, nearly all I-130 approvals this week flowed through IOE, meaning the 91-day IOE median is the operative this-week figure for most readers. Those with IOE receipt numbers can treat 91 days as the week's central estimate for the final-stage wait. Readers with SRC or MSC receipts should note the small sample sizes (15 and 13 cases, respectively) and avoid drawing conclusions from the 153- or 120-day figures for those centers.