I-765 Total Wait Drops to 143 Days but Remains Nearly Three Times Above Last Year

The I-765 total wait fell 61 days week over week, from 204 days to 143 days, the week of November 2. Against the same week in 2025, however, the median was 56 days, leaving this week's figure roughly 2.5 times higher than a year ago. USCIS approved 15,740 cases this week; filing dates were known for 15,524 of them, covering 13,764 published directly by USCIS and 1,760 inferred from neighboring receipt numbers. The pending backlog of I-765 cases stood at 1,252,341 as of November 9, up from 1,184,630 twenty-eight days earlier. Every wait figure below is computed on approved cases only; it does not reflect how long the cases still pending have been waiting.

The spread within this week's total wait is wide. The 25th percentile (p25) cleared within 40 days, the median sat at 143 days, and the 75th percentile (p75) extended to 291 days. Beyond that, 17% of the cases with a known filing date waited longer than a year before approval. A single median captures the middle of the distribution but leaves out the full range that any individual applicant might experience.

The time from the last status update to approval, the final-stage wait, is a secondary and shorter measure than the total filing-to-approval wait. Over the past 12 weeks it has ranged from 86 days (the week of September 21) to 164 days (August 31), closing this week at 107 days, down 44 days from 150 days the prior week. The 8-week slope of +2.2 days per week and an R² of 0.06 together indicate the series has no reliable directional trend. Weekly readings oscillate around the 12-week trailing average of 126 days without any consistent pattern.

This week's final-stage median of 107 days sits below the 12-week trailing average of 126 days and below the same week last year at 121 days. With R² at 0.06, though, the regression explains almost none of the week-to-week variance, so this week's reading is consistent with normal week-to-week noise rather than a structural improvement. The noisy pattern means week-to-week moves in either direction carry limited predictive weight.

IOE-processed cases, which account for 12,731 of the 15,502 approvals this week (about 82% of the sample), carried a median of 74 days with a slope of -0.1 days per week, essentially flat. SRC (the Texas Service Center, n=1,937 this week) posted a median of 205 days and a slope of +18.6 days per week over 8 weeks (R²=0.69), meaning the trend there has been consistently slower over that window. SRC also had a 47% transferred_share this week, meaning nearly half of its approved cases arrived via transfer from another center; that case-mix difference makes a direct speed comparison with IOE misleading. EAC (the Vermont Service Center, n=388 this week) posted a median of 460 days with a slope of +18.1 days per week (R²=0.48).

The receipt-number prefix records where a case was originally filed, not where it will be decided. USCIS transfers cases between centers as a routine operational matter, and the data tracks the deciding center, not the filing center. Applicants cannot choose a faster center at filing. The gap between IOE and SRC or EAC reflects routing and case-mix differences; the two populations are not directly comparable.