I-821D Final-Stage Wait Hits 158 Days as Active Backlog Reaches 10,791 Cases

The median final-stage wait for I-821D applications reached 158 days this week, based on 2,401 cases approved. That is 72 days above last week's 86-day reading and well above the 3-year same-week average of 12 days. The active pending backlog (cases filed in 2026 that have not yet been adjudicated, the USCIS case decision step) grew from approximately 14 cases on May 7 to 10,791 as of July 27, a rise of 10,777 cases over 81 days.

The 12-week pattern shows two distinct regimes. From May through mid-June, the median ran in the 140-169 day range before falling to a low of 21 days in the week of June 8, when 5,049 cases were approved in a single week, a volume that may reflect a large batch clearing at once. The median then climbed back through the 130s and 150s over the following six weeks. The 3-year same-week average of 12 days for this ISO week underscores how elevated the current reading is, though the data brief does not identify a specific mechanism for the shift.

The 8-week regression slope of +14.2 days per week appears consistent with a sustained upward trend, though the R² of 0.40 means week-to-week volatility is real. The 12-week range spans 21 to 169 days, reflecting how sharply the series has moved. Monthly status counts add context: cases reaching the processing stage numbered roughly 10 per month in mid-2025, then rose to 5,377 in May 2026 and 7,393 in March 2026, a shift that aligns with the backlog accumulation observed since early spring.

The interquartile range (IQR, the spread between the 25th percentile and the 75th percentile) this week runs from 4 days at the 25th percentile (p25) to 204 days at the 75th percentile (p75), a spread of 200 days. That means some cases are clearing in less than a week while others are waiting nearly seven months. This bimodal pattern, where a fast-clearing subset pulls the low end down while a slow queue holds the high end up, aligns with a batch-clearing dynamic rather than a uniform queue moving at a steady pace.

This week, cases that received and responded to an RFE (Request for Evidence, USCIS's standard follow-up letter asking for additional documentation) posted a median final-stage wait of 9 days, versus 104 days for cases with no RFE. That is an 11.5x speed advantage in favor of RFE-stamped cases, and it triggered the data's rfe_fast anomaly flag. An RFE does not signal denial; most cases that receive one are ultimately approved. The likely explanation is that a batch of older RFE-response cases cleared together in a single week, rather than a sustained change in how USCIS handles RFE responses. The data brief does not confirm this mechanism, and one week is not enough to draw a firm conclusion.

Cases carrying an RFE actually cleared faster this week, a reminder that a request for documentation is not a warning of denial.

The rfe_fast flag captures one week's pattern. Stage-duration data from the last 30 days shows that cases sitting at the 'Response To USCIS Request For Evidence Was Received' status have a median raw wait of 225 days, with a p25 of 209 days and a p75 of 261 days, across 997 cases. That is the longest median of any active processing stage in the current data, indicating that long-term RFE response processing remains slow even when a single week's batch moves quickly.