I-360 total wait holds at a preliminary 196 days, up 32 days from a year ago

This week's 196-day total wait is an early read, based on 403 approvals that represent roughly 50–70% of the trailing 12-week approval volume. Of those, 431 had a known filing date, yielding a median of 196 days — identical to last week but 32 days above the same week a year ago (164 days). The +19.5% year-over-year gap is the clearest single-number signal in this issue. A small share of those approved cases finished quickly: 12 cases (3%) cleared within 45 days of filing, while 21 cases (5%) waited more than a year. The preliminary sample means these figures may shift modestly as the week's data firms up.

The active pending count reached 182,118 cases as of October 28, up from 139,927 just 28 days earlier, a gain of 42,191 cases (+30.2%). The 196-day wait is measured only on cases that were approved this week; it says nothing about how long those 182,118 still-pending cases have waited or will wait. These are two distinct populations, and the approved-case median cannot be used to estimate the future wait for cases currently in the queue.

The total wait has moved in a narrow band over the past 12 weeks, ranging from 190 days (the week of August 10) to 196 days (this week and last). The distribution around that median has tightened: in early August the 25th percentile (p25) sat at 188 days and the 75th percentile (p75) reached 315 days, a spread of 127 days. This week the p25 is 195 days and the p75 is 200 days, a spread of just 5 days. That compression suggests cases are now clustering tightly around the median rather than spanning a wide range of outcomes.

Underneath the stable total wait, a secondary measure has moved sharply. The time from the last reported status update to approval — a final-stage metric, not the total wait from filing — started the 12-week window at 63 days (the week of August 10) and reached 133 days this week, a rise of 70 days in 10 weeks. The 8-week regression slope is +9.3 days per week with R² of 0.76, indicating a consistent upward trend in this secondary measure. The combination is unusual: early-stage processing appears to have absorbed much of the wait, and that early-stage speed now appears to be reversing in the final stage.

The final-stage wait has more than doubled in 10 weeks while the total wait barely moved — a compression of early processing speed that now appears to be unwinding.

An anomaly fired this week in the RFE (Request for Evidence, USCIS's standard follow-up letter asking for missing documents) comparison. Cases that received an RFE and responded cleared with a median of 10 days from last status update to approval, against 90 days for cases that never received one. That 8.68x speed ratio is unusual. Receiving an RFE is not a denial signal; most cases that go through the RFE process are ultimately approved. The pattern here may reflect a batch of RFE responses from a specific earlier period clearing in the same week, rather than any permanent structural shift in how these cases are adjudicated. A single week is not enough to confirm any mechanism.

The stage durations table (raw percentiles over the last 30 days) shows where time is accumulating in the broader I-360 population. Cases currently at the 'Case Was Received' status have a median of 202 days at that status, with a p25 of 188 days and a p75 of 216 days across 50,781 cases — the largest single group, at 49.8% of tracked cases. Cases whose last recorded status is 'Case Was Approved' sit at a median of 332 days (p25 317, p75 345) across 8,970 cases, meaning the approval notice has issued but the case clock continues. The 'Fees Were Waived' category shows a median of 515 days across 5,108 cases, the longest median in the table. All 403 approvals this week processed through MSC (the National Benefits Center, USCIS's facility in Lee's Summit, MO), which is the sole service center for this week's I-360 data.