I-539 Medians Run 7 Days Below Last Year, But Center Gaps Tell a Different Story

I-539 applicants approved during the week of August 24 waited a median of 108 days from their last reported status to approval — 7 days shorter than the 115-day reading recorded in the same week last year. That year-over-year comparison is the cleaner signal: it reflects a population of sufficient size (4,067 approvals this week versus 412 in the same week a year ago) and aligns with the direction the 12-week trend has been pointing. Week over week, however, the median moved the other direction, rising 5 days from 103 last week. A single-week uptick inside a longer improvement does not reverse the trend, but it does illustrate how much the week-to-week reading can move.

The 8-week regression slope of -2.2 days per week means the median has fallen roughly 18 days over the past two months, from around 124 days (week of June 29) to 108 today. The R² of 0.30 is low enough to caution against reading too much precision into any single week's number. Week-to-week readings have ranged from 94 days to 168 days across the last 12 weeks, so the direction is more informative than the magnitude at any given point.

SRC (Texas Service Center) handled 2,888 of this week's 4,067 approvals — about 71% of the total — at a median of just 58 days. That volume advantage pulls the aggregate median toward SRC's pace and away from a realistic picture of what applicants at other centers are experiencing. WAC (California Service Center, at 207 days this week) and EAC (Vermont Service Center, at 272 days) present a very different picture, with case mixes and caseloads that are not directly comparable to SRC's. The gap between SRC and EAC stands at 214 days, wide enough to trigger the uneven_centers anomaly flag (value = 218.20).

WAC's trajectory is worth noting separately. Its slope of -10.2 days per week over the past 8 weeks, with an R² of 0.95, is one of the strongest and most consistent improving signals in the current data. Cases at WAC approved this week look considerably different from those approved there two months ago. EAC, by contrast, carries a slope of just +0.6 days per week with an R² near zero, indicating no discernible trend in either direction — the 272-day median there reflects a level that has held roughly flat for two months.

For applicants at EAC or LIN (Nebraska Service Center), the 108-day national median lands in a different universe from their actual wait.