I-485 Final-Stage Wait Has Nearly Doubled in 12 Weeks, Forecast Points Higher
The median wait from last case status to approval has climbed from 42 days in late June to 77 days this week, a confirmed upward trend. If the pace holds, the model projects 89 days by early October.
The I-485 Adjustment of Status final-stage wait has risen 35 days over 12 weeks, from 42 days in the week of June 22 to 77 days this week, based on 6,054 approved cases. The 8-week slope of +2.9 days per week at an R² of 0.70 marks this as a confirmed upward trend, not a single-week reading. Year over year, the median is 4% above the same week in 2025 (74 days across 9,741 cases). A linear projection places the median near 89 days by October 5 if the slope continues, with a forecast band of 84 to 94 days. The active backlog of pending cases stands at roughly 1,033,856, up 964 over the past 28 days, offering no near-term mechanical brake on the trend.
- The I-485 final-stage median has risen 35 days over 12 weeks, from 42 days (week of June 22) to 77 days this week, at a slope of +2.9 days/week (R²=0.70).
- The 25th-to-75th-percentile spread has widened from 27 to 63 days in late June to 28 to 111 days this week, an 83-day window that makes individual-case prediction harder than three months ago.
- An rfe_fast anomaly flag fired this week: RFE (Request for Evidence)-stamped cases cleared in a median of 27 days, faster than the 65-day median for plain-processing cases, likely reflecting a batch of earlier responses resolving simultaneously.
- IOE, processing 5,161 cases this week (85% of volume), carries a slope of +3.3 days/week (R²=0.77), mirroring and driving the national trend.
- The 4-week forecast projects 89 days by the week of October 5 (band: 84 to 94 days), a mechanical extrapolation that assumes no policy or staffing change.
Twelve weeks, nearly twice as long
The median final-stage wait for I-485 Adjustment of Status approvals stood at 42 days in the week of June 22. This week it sits at 77 days, a 35-day climb over 12 weeks. The 8-week regression slope of +2.9 days per week at an R² of 0.70 signals a strong, confirmed upward trend: the week-to-week readings show a nearly unbroken rise across the 12-week table, not a single-week anomaly. At R²=0.70, the linear fit accounts for about 70% of the week-to-week variance, placing this squarely in the range where direction can be stated with confidence.
Against the same week last year (74 days) and the 3-year same-week average (also 74 days), this week's reading of 77 days is 3 days higher, a gap that remains modest in absolute terms. What makes the picture less reassuring is the direction of travel: both prior-year and 3-year benchmarks are below the current reading, and the 12-week table shows the median has not retreated to those levels since early July.
A wider window, and a longer one
The 25th percentile (p25) this week is 28 days and the 75th percentile (p75) is 111 days, giving a spread of 83 days between the fastest quarter and the slowest quarter of approved cases. In the week of June 22, the same window ran from 27 to 63 days, a spread of just 36 days. That widening means that where an individual case lands within the distribution is considerably harder to anticipate than it was three months ago: two cases entering the final stage at the same time can resolve more than 80 days apart.
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