I-751 Wait Times Are 65% Below Last Year, but an 8-Week Climb Signals Caution

The final-stage wait measures the time from a case's last reported status to the approval event, not the full span from filing. This week's 87-day reading is 8 days below last week's 95 and 65.7% below the 253-day figure posted in the same week of 2025. The sample of 719 approvals this week is nearly double last year's 389, which adds confidence to the year-over-year comparison.

The cautionary signal sits alongside that improvement. The 8-week regression slope of +5.7 days per week (R² = 0.77) shows the median rising consistently since late June. The 12-week table traces the path: the median touched 47 days in the week of July 6, climbed through 68 days in early August, reached 95 days the week of August 24, and settled at 87 this week. This week's 8-day dip does not break the broader upward pattern; at the current slope, the median adds roughly 40 days over an 8-week window.

The 87-day median describes only cases that reached approval this week. The broader pending population tells a different story. Across all filing cohorts, 347,492 cases were active as of September 7. According to the stage durations data (30-day raw window), about 41.4% of tracked cases sit at 'Biometrics Appointment Was Scheduled' with a median of 19 days at that status. Another 25.5% are at 'Case Was Received and A Receipt Notice Was Sent' (median 15 days). The segment that most closely maps to the experience of readers deep in the queue is the 14.7% at 'USCIS Is Currently Processing the Case,' where the median wait is 285 days, with the 25th percentile (p25) at 203 days and the 75th percentile (p75) at 348 days, across 29,387 cases at that status.

A small stratum draws attention: 1,022 cases (0.5% of those tracked in the stage durations data) sit at 'Case Was Updated To Show Fingerprints Were Taken' with a median of 1,163 days, and a p25 of 976 days and p75 of 1,272 days across that group. These cases appear to represent the oldest stratum of the pending backlog, likely filed in 2023 or earlier. This is not a current processing condition; it appears to reflect cases that predate recent clearance efforts.

The total active caseload across all filing cohorts grew by 6,506 cases (+1.9%) over the 28 days ending September 7, reaching 347,492. New petitions are arriving faster than completions. This structural imbalance is consistent with the 8-week upward slope in the final-stage median: approvals are happening, but intake is outpacing them.