Methodology

Case statuses

When you check a receipt number, our server asks the USCIS Case Status API and shows the answer as USCIS sent it, in English or Spanish. Our explanations of each status are written by us from USCIS sources and are general information.

Processing times

We use two USCIS publications. The monthly report to Congress gives, for the main forms, the average number of months from receipt to decision for applications decided that month. The quarterly report of all forms gives the same average for every form, nationally.

These averages are different from the USCIS processing times tool, which shows how long it took to complete 80% of cases at a given office. Both are official; they measure different things.

Pace of a field office

USCIS publishes, each quarter, how many N-400, I-130 and I-485 applications each field office received, approved, denied and still has pending. It does not publish a processing time per office in these files. To compare offices, we compute a pace:

pace = (approved + denied) ÷ pending for the office, divided by the same ratio for the whole country.

1.0× means the national pace. Above 1.2× we show “Faster”, below 0.8× “Slower”. Offices with fewer than 300 pending cases or 50 decisions in the quarter are shown as “Not enough data”. One quarter of data can swing, so we always show the raw counts next to the pace. The pace is our estimate, not a USCIS figure.

Updates

We update the figures when USCIS publishes new files, usually monthly for the report to Congress and quarterly for the other reports.