I-751 Waits Down 67% Year Over Year, but an 8-Week Drift Is Narrowing That Lead
The week of September 7, 2026 shows an 84-day final-stage median, a substantial improvement from 257 days a year ago. A steady upward slope of +4.5 days per week now points toward 89 to 114 days by early October if it continues.
I-751 final-stage waits have fallen to 84 days this week, down from 257 days during the same week in 2025, a 67% improvement that reflects more than a year of sustained progress on the petition to remove conditions on residence. The year-over-year gap is large and real. But it is paired with a complication: over the last eight weeks, medians have drifted upward at roughly 4.5 days per week, a slope with enough linearity (R² of 0.66) to take seriously. If that drift holds, the forecast band points toward approximately 89 to 114 days by the week of October 5. The picture this week is genuinely mixed, and both signals deserve attention.
- The I-751 final-stage median fell to 84 days this week, down 67% from 257 days during the same week in 2025.
- An 8-week upward slope of +4.5 days per week (R² = 0.66) represents a credible drift, not noise, with early-July lows of 45 days now 39 days behind.
- Cases with an RFE (Request for Evidence) response cleared faster than plain-processing cases this week: 51 days vs. 68 days, a pattern the data does not fully explain.
- The 'USCIS Is Currently Processing the Case' stage holds approximately 29,800 cases in the 30-day window at a median of 287 days, the central bottleneck for still-pending filers.
- Filing-month groups from April through September 2026 show approval rates of 0.0% to 0.1%, which is consistent with normal cohort (a group of cases) immaturity at 1 to 23 weeks of age.
A year of gains, and a creeping reversal
This week's 84-day median for the I-751 (Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence) represents the clearest measure of how far processing times have come: a year ago, the same-week reading was 257 days, a gap of 173 days. The improvement is large and sustained across many months, consistent with USCIS backlog-reduction efforts through 2024, though the data does not isolate a single cause. The year-over-year drop of 67% is the dominant fact of this week's report.
The complication is visible in the 12-week trend. In mid-July, the weekly median (the 50th percentile, p50, meaning half of approved cases cleared faster and half slower) touched 45 days. Since then, the series has drifted upward at roughly 4.5 days per week, with an R² of 0.66 indicating a moderately strong linear fit. This week's 84-day reading is nearly double that July low, and the direction of travel over eight weeks is upward, not downward.
Where the queue lives: 287 days at the processing stage
The 84-day final-stage median describes cases that have already been approved, measuring the gap between their last reported status and the approval event. For the much larger population still waiting, the stage picture is different. The largest share of active cases, 41.6%, sit at biometrics (the fingerprint and photo appointment USCIS uses to identify applicants before adjudication, the case decision step), with a median of 19 days at that stage. The second-largest share, 14.6% of cases, are at the 'USCIS Is Currently Processing the Case' status, where the raw median reaches 287 days across approximately 29,800 cases observed in the last 30 days.
The 'USCIS Is Currently Processing the Case' stage, with its 287-day median (25th percentile at 204 days, 75th percentile at 349 days) across roughly 29,800 cases in the 30-day window, represents the main queue for applicants who have passed biometrics and are awaiting a decision. A case sitting at this status is in the adjudicator queue. Status not changing does not mean the file is dormant; the case will typically jump directly from this status to an approval or request for additional information when the adjudicator reaches it.
The RFE inversion: why flagged cases clear faster
Cases that received and responded to an RFE (Request for Evidence, USCIS's standard follow-up letter asking for missing documents) posted a median final-stage wait of 51 days this week. Cases that went through plain processing without an RFE posted 68 days. RFE-stamped cases cleared faster than the non-RFE group by 17 days. Receiving an RFE is not itself a denial signal; most cases that receive one are still approved.
1.34x RFE response cases clear faster than the plain processing cohort.
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