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America's Immigration Machine Is Lagging Behind: And the New Numbers Prove It
If you have filed anything with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the past year and felt like it vanished into a void, you are certainly not alone. According to new data compiled by the American Immigration Council, the agency responsible for processing everything from green cards to work permits is now completing fewer cases. Moreover, they are denying more of them, and making people wait dramatically longer for an answer, which, in some categories, is years longer.
Here, our EB-1A consultants have discussed and analyzed everything you need to know about the report published by the American Immigration Council.
What does the report reveal about immigration trends?
The Council's USCIS Immigration Filing Trends Dashboard, updated with fiscal year 2026 figures, paints a picture of a system running in reverse. Between the first quarter of FY2025 and the first quarter of FY2026, the agency's backlog of pending cases grew by more than 1.6 million (a 16.5% jump!), climbing from 9.7 million to 11.3 million applications and petitions. That is roughly the population of Michigan!
What makes the backlog especially striking is that it grew even as fewer people applied. USCIS received 33.6% fewer applications in Q1 FY2026 than the year before, yet completed 40.8% fewer cases in the same window. In plain terms: the front door narrowed, but the exit narrowed even faster. The result is what the Council calls an "efficiency ratio" (completions divided by receipts of filings) that has now sat below 1 for eleven consecutive quarters. During the most recent quarter, USCIS finished just 86 cases for every 100 it received.
Some categories have essentially seized up. Employment authorization documents (EADs) tied to pending green card applications saw their backlog nearly triple, from about 154,000 pending cases to nearly 462,000, even though the number of new applications barely moved. The most extreme example involves adjustment-of-status applications filed by refugees: completions fell from 17,756 to just 3,536. In other words, USCIS resolved only about 14 out of every 100 such cases it received.
The waiting game has gotten correspondingly worse. Across all USCIS forms, average backlog clearance time nearly doubled year-over-year, from 9.4 months to 18.6 months. For asylees seeking to adjust their status, clearance time exploded more than eightfold, i.e., from 7.7 months to 70.6 months, or nearly six years.
The denial numbers tell their own story
USCIS's overall denial rate rose from 8.9% to 12.2% year over year, but the sharpest increases hit categories reserved for the most accomplished applicants. The denial rate across all EB-1 employment-based petitions (covering elite researchers, executives, and professionals) jumped from 13.9% to 30.1%. Within that group, EB-1A "Extraordinary Ability" petitions saw denials more than double, from 25.3% to 52.5%, while National Interest Waiver petitions (EB-2 NIW) climbed from 37.3% to 57.4%.
A separate analysis by the National Foundation for American Policy, reported by Forbes, found that the EB-1 denial rate nearly doubled from 25.6% to 46.6% between the fourth quarters of FY2024 and FY2025. Meanwhile, NIW denials rose from 38.8% to 64.3% over the same span. Efren Hernandez, a former USCIS supervisory policy analyst who now runs EH3 Immigration Consulting, told Forbes that the written standards for these categories have not actually changed, but the scrutiny has. Adjudicators, he said, are "demanding sharper, more objective proof of extraordinary ability or national importance," and picking apart individual pieces of evidence rather than weighing petitions holistically.
Humanitarian categories were hit hardest of all. Denials for humanitarian parole applications rocketed from 52.9% to 88.7%, while parole-in-place denials more than doubled, from 18.4% to 45.8%.
What the information means for EB-1A applicants
For a highly skilled EB-1A applicant, this information increasingly means being confident and even precise about their qualifications is not enough anymore. The paperwork now needs to survive an adjudication environment that is suspicious of all forms of ambiguity. As the American Immigration Council's dashboard continues tracking new quarters of data, the open question is now whether FY2026 marks a temporary trough or a durable reset in how the U.S. immigration system operates.
This information, alongside with the latest policy update by USCIS, implies that now you need to be absolutely prepared before you file your petition. There is very little to no margin of error. This is precisely why, at GCEB1, our eb1a mentors encourage every candidate to prepare an organic profile over a checklist one. Get in touch with us for a personalized evaluation to understand the strength and weakness of your profile.
Sources & further readings
- American Immigration Council. "USCIS Immigration Filing Trends and Processing Times." Accessed August 7, 2026. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/uscis-immigration-filing-trends/.
- Anderson, Stuart. "Immigration Delays and Backlogs Continue to Grow, New Data Show." Forbes, April 2026. https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/.
- National Foundation for American Policy. Analysis of USCIS Denial Rates and Processing Backlogs. Arlington, VA: National Foundation for American Policy, April 2026. https://nfap.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/NFAP-Analysis-of-Denial-Rates.April-2026.DAY-OF-RELEASE.pdf.
- American Immigration Council. "New Dashboard Reveals Insights Into USCIS Backlogs and Processing Trends." April 29, 2026. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/uscis-backlogs-processing-trends-dashboard/.
- U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. "Immigration and Citizenship Data." Accessed August 7, 2026. https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/immigration-and-citizenship-data.
