I-360 Total Wait Reaches 197 Days, Up 20% From a Year Ago

Of the 389 I-360 cases approved in Week 44, 388 had a known filing date. Their median wait from USCIS receipt to approval was 197 days. As of November 4, 182,540 cases remain pending, up from 140,880 just 28 days earlier. Every wait figure in this brief is measured on approved cases only; none describes how long those pending cases have waited. Against the same week in 2025, when the median stood at 164 days across 602 approvals, this week's figure represents a 20.1% increase.

The total-wait trend has moved steadily upward across the 12-week window. The median was 190 days in early August, rose through 194–196 days in September and early October, and reached 197 days this week. The interquartile range (IQR, the spread from the 25th to the 75th percentile) widened in Week 44 (p25=196, p75=208) relative to the tight band seen in late September, when the 25th percentile (p25) was 193 days and the 75th percentile (p75) was 197 days. Nine percent of cases approved this week waited more than a year from filing to approval.

The time from the last reported status update to approval, the final-stage wait, differs from the total wait and is a secondary metric. It was 63 days in W33 (August 10), dipped slightly through early September, then rose from 121 days in W39 (September 21) to 142 days in W44. The 8-week slope is +9.3 days per week with an R² of 0.78, meaning the linear trend accounts for roughly 78% of the week-to-week variance. That is a consistent, statistically meaningful rise, not week-to-week noise.

In the same week last year, the final-stage median was 163 days (n=88). This week's 142 days is modestly below that figure, but the trajectory differs. Last year's trend was flat-to-declining at this point in the calendar; this year's slope is sharply positive. The 12-week trailing average stands at 94 days, well below the current 142, confirming that most of the acceleration is concentrated in the most recent weeks.

The final-stage median was 63 days in early August. Ten weeks later it stands at 142, with the slope showing no sign of flattening.

The stage-duration data (30-day window, raw percentiles) shows that the 'Case Was Received' status holds 49.4% of active cases, across 51,784 cases, with a median of 203 days (p25 188 days, p75 217 days). The 'Case Was Approved' status accounts for 9.0% of the pipeline, across 9,383 cases, at a median of 334 days (p25 319, p75 347), indicating a subset of cases with extended total waits before the final approval status was recorded. An additional 8.4% of the pipeline sits at the 'Special Immigrant Juvenile Form I-360 Approved Without Deferred Action' status, which resolves in a median of 1 day (p25 1, p75 3), across 8,832 cases, suggesting rapid administrative completion once that determination is made.