USCIS Backlog Grows Even as Agency Gets Fewer Filings

New government filings reveal a continued — and in some areas accelerating — deterioration in processing at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). 
 
The latest data from the American Immigration Council’s USCIS Immigration Filing Trends Dashboard show that the agency’s backlog of immigration petitions and applications worsened in the second quarter of fiscal year (FY) 2026, even as USCIS received dramatically fewer filings than it did one year earlier. A trend that reflects a series of policy and process changes by the Trump administration intended on restricting immigration into the United States.

The number of pending cases reached a new high in the Council’s dataset, which dates to the firstquarter of FY2016 — back when the number of pending cases was just over 3 million. A decade later, in FY2026 Q2, pending cases climbed to 12.1 million, a 7.2% increase compared with the previous year. Completions, meanwhile, continued to decline, hitting 1.5 million and marking the eighth consecutive quarter of decreases.

The contrast is particularly striking when compared with recent years. In FY2024 Q2, USCIS completed 3.3 million applications and petitions, more than twice the number completed in the most recent quarter.

The time needed to clear the backlog also jumped significantly. Estimated backlog clearance time nearly doubled year over year, increasing from 12.5 months in FY2025 Q2 to 24.1 months in FY2026 Q2. It also rose nearly 30% in just one quarter, up from 18.6 months in FY2026 Q1.

USCIS allowed backlogs to surge, even as the number of forms received fell, across many categories. Some of the most notable increases include:

• I-765 Application for Employment Authorization Documents (EADs) by Applicants with Pending Adjustment-of-Status Petitions: Pending cases increased by 206%, rising from 191,000 in FY2025Q2 to 585,000 in FY2026 Q2, despite decreasing receipts.

• I-485 Application for Adjustment of Status by Refugee: Pending cases rose 190% from FY2025 Q2 to FY2026 Q2.

• I-129 Petitions for Nonimmigrant Workers (including H-1B, L-1, and O-1 petitions): While the number of forms received decreased by less than 1% and approval rates remained stable, increasing slightly from 89.2% to 89.6%, pending cases increased by 90%, from 63,000 in FY2025Q2to 120,000 in FY2026 Q2.

These growing backlogs occurred even as USCIS experienced a dramatic reduction in workload. Compared with FY2025 Q2, the number of forms received in FY2026 Q2 declined by 45.0%. Instead of using the reduced workload to address existing delays, USCIS further reduced the number of completions by 44.5%.

Reduced processing capacity has coincided with more restrictive adjudication patterns across several immigration pathways. Approval rates declined most sharply between FY2025 Q2 and FY2026 Q2 in the following categories:

• I-485 Application for Adjustment of Status by Cuban Nationals: a drop of 44.6 percentage points, from 97.2% to 52.6%.

• I-485 Application for Adjustment of Status by Refugees: a drop of 31.3 percentage points, from 97.4% to 66.1%.

• I-140 Immigrant Petition for Workers of Extraordinary Ability (EB-1 E11): a drop of 31.0 percentage points, from 72.7% in FY2025 Q2 to 41.7%.

• I-131 Application for Parole-in-Place: a drop of 24.1 percentage points, from 78.6% to 54.5%.

• I-140 Immigrant Petitions for Professionals with National Interest Waiver (EB2 NIW): a drop of 19.2 percentage points, from 67.3% to 48.1%.

One positive development was the increase in the number of approvals for employment-based I-485 adjustment-of-status applications. Approvals nearly doubled, from 21,924 to 41,979 between Q1 and Q2 in FY2026.

Even so, given the processing delays, it remains unclear whether the government agencies, including USCIS and the Department of State, which handles immigration applications and petitions through U.S. consulates and embassies, will be able to process and issue all 186,317 employment-based visas available in FY2026 before the fiscal year ends on September 30. The allocation includes 46,317 visa numbers that rolled over from unused family-sponsor visas from FY2025. Unused employment-based visa numbers in a fiscal year generally cannot carry over into the following year.

As USCIS receives fewer filings but processes fewer cases, the agency’s growing backlog suggests a sustained decline in adjudication capacity that is affecting applicants across a wide range of immigration pathways. Unless processing capacity improves, immigrants, employers, and families alike will face growing uncertainty and delays in the years ahead.