I-485 national median holds at 42 days as WAC's 352-day outlier widens the center gap

The national final-stage median for I-485 (Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status, commonly called the green card application) approvals came in at 42 days this week, nearly unchanged from 41 days the prior week. The 12-week trailing average sits at 56 days, so this week's reading continues to run below that benchmark. On its own, the headline number describes a stable, below-average wait. It does not, however, describe what is happening at every center.

The `uneven_centers` anomaly flag fired this week at a value of 246.38, well above the 12-day threshold that defines normal center-to-center spread. WAC (California Service Center, the USCIS facility in Laguna Niguel, CA) posted a median of 352 days, against IOE's 39 days, a 313-day difference. WAC's 8-week slope stands at +32.9 days per week, the steepest positive slope of any center in the current window. That trajectory, across several weeks, is harder to attribute to a single data point, though WAC's small weekly sample of 33 approvals means week-to-week variance is high.

The national median opened the 12-week window at 73 days in early April and climbed to 90 days in the week of April 27. That peak coincided with the lowest weekly sample in the window, 2,163 approvals, so some of that elevation likely reflects who happened to be approved that particular week rather than a genuine acceleration in wait times. From there, the median compressed to 30 days by mid-May before settling into a stable band. This week's 42 days falls comfortably within the 36-to-49 day range that has held since late May.

The 8-week regression slope is -0.4 days per week, with an R² of 0.01. Per standard interpretation, a slope below ±0.5 and an R² well under 0.4 both point to a noisy-stable pattern: no meaningful directional trend is present. The current reading reflects a flat plateau. Neither acceleration nor deceleration is supported by these figures.