USCIS publishes historical processing time data at egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/historic-pt, covering fiscal years 2012 through 2026 and broken out by form type.1U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Historic Processing Times The page is free, requires no login, and sits alongside the agency’s current processing times tool. If you want to compare how long a form takes today against what it took in past years, this is the official source.
Where the Historical Data Lives
The Historic Processing Times page is a companion to the main Case Processing Times tool at egov.uscis.gov/processing-times, which USCIS aims to refresh monthly.2U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Frequently Asked Questions About Processing Times The historical page reports figures by fiscal year and form type going back to fiscal year 2012.1U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Historic Processing Times
Before you draw conclusions from the numbers, three things are worth understanding about how the tables are built.
What the Historical Tables Actually Show
The historical figures are national medians. That means the number for a given form and fiscal year reflects the 50th percentile: half the cases finished faster, half took longer.3U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Questions and Answers for Form I-730 Refugee/Asylee Follow-to-Join Processing There is no field office or service center breakdown in the historical tables. If your case sits at a particular office, the national median will not tell you how that office alone was performing in a given year.
USCIS also notes that the historical reports have shifted over time. Discrepancies from earlier versions of the tables may exist because reporting procedures have changed across the years, so exact comparisons between very old and very recent figures should be read with some allowance for methodology drift.
Processing time on any individual case is measured from the date USCIS received the application to the date it issued a final decision, whether an approval or a denial.3U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Questions and Answers for Form I-730 Refugee/Asylee Follow-to-Join Processing The published median rolls up all those individual cases within a fiscal year for the form in question.
Comparing Historical Figures to Current Processing Times
This is where most people trip up. The historical tables use the median. The current Case Processing Times tool does not: it shows the 80th percentile, meaning the length of time it took USCIS to finish 80% of adjudicated cases for that form and office over the previous six months.4U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. USCIS Simplifying, Improving Communication of Case Processing Data One in five recently decided cases took longer than the number displayed.
Because an 80th percentile figure will almost always be higher than a median for the same population, laying a current 80th-percentile number next to a historical median and calling the difference “growth in wait times” overstates the change. If you want a genuine year-over-year comparison, compare medians to medians across the historical years and treat the current tool as a separate, more conservative estimate of what recent filers experienced.
USCIS switched the current tool from a time range to a single 80th percentile figure to make the data easier to interpret, but the change also means the two tools are no longer speaking the same statistical language.4U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. USCIS Simplifying, Improving Communication of Case Processing Data
Getting Data the Public Tool Doesn’t Publish
If you need something more granular than a national median by fiscal year — say, historical figures for a specific field office, or breakdowns by category within a form — the public page will not give it to you. The route is a Freedom of Information Act request.
As of January 2026, all FOIA requests for USCIS records must be submitted online through first.uscis.gov after you create a USCIS account.5U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Request Records through the Freedom of Information Act or Privacy Act Two practical tips before you file. Check the USCIS Electronic Reading Room first, because the data may already be posted. And write your request as narrowly as you can: FOIA requests for specific, well-defined data sets get processed much faster than sweeping ones.
Why Historical Numbers Move From Year to Year
When you look at a form’s median across several fiscal years and see a jump, the cause usually is not the strength or weakness of any category of application. The volume of new filings is the biggest driver. When a form category sees a spike, the backlog grows and the median stretches. Policy changes that add vetting steps or new evidence requirements also lengthen adjudication, sometimes for one form type while leaving others untouched.
Requests for Evidence contribute in a way that is easy to miss. When USCIS issues an RFE, the time between the agency sending it and the applicant returning documents still counts toward that case’s total processing time. Years in which RFEs went out more frequently will tend to show longer medians even if the underlying adjudicative work did not slow down. Staffing shortages at particular offices can also affect the national picture, though those localized effects are harder to see in a national median.
Reading Your Own Case Against the Historical Data
The historical page is useful for context, but it is not the tool for checking where your case stands. For that, you need the current processing times tool and Case Status Online, which are separate services.6U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Checking Your Case Status Online The current tool tells you the 80th-percentile estimate and gives a “Receipt date for a case inquiry”; Case Status Online at egov.uscis.gov/casestatus tells you what USCIS has actually done on your specific filing.
To use either, you need your receipt number from the I-797C Notice of Action USCIS sent after accepting your filing. The receipt number is 13 characters: three letters indicating which service center received the filing, followed by ten digits.7U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Receipt Number “IOE” indicates a case filed through a USCIS online account; “SRC” indicates the Texas Service Center, and so on.
If you create a personal account at my.uscis.gov, you can see the last five actions on your case in one place, which makes it easier to track milestones like biometrics and interview scheduling alongside whatever the historical data is telling you about typical timelines.
When the Historical Data Suggests Your Case Is Late
The historical page will not tell you whether your specific case is overdue. That determination comes from the current tool: if your I-797C receipt date is earlier than the “Receipt date for a case inquiry” shown for your form, category, and office, USCIS considers your case outside normal processing times, and you can submit a formal inquiry through the e-Request system at egov.uscis.gov/e-request.8U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. e-Request – Self Service Tools You can also reach the USCIS Contact Center at 1-800-375-5283 (TTY: 1-800-767-1833), which can create a service request routed to the office handling your case.9U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. USCIS Policy Manual – Types of Assistance
Historical medians are context for that decision, not a substitute for it. A form whose median has climbed steadily over recent fiscal years may still leave your individual case well within current normal processing times, and a form whose median has held steady may still contain outlier cases that qualify for an inquiry. Use the historical page to understand the trend; use the current tool to decide whether to act.