FY2025 wait times by category, service center, and field office, plus the quarterly trend data that national averages bury.
If you're waiting on an adjustment of status decision, "how long does I-485 take" has no single honest answer. USCIS closed FY2025 with family-based cases finishing in a median of about 6 months, while employment, refugee, Cuban, asylee, and other adjustments ran anywhere from 7.5 to 18.5 months on the quarterly books. The national monthly average for the frozen humanitarian categories has since spiked into the twenties and beyond as approvals stopped. That spread is not a rounding error. It depends on your green card category, which USCIS office got your case, and which of the two dozen or so policy changes in 2025 and 2026 applied to you.
This guide breaks down current I-485 processing times using two data sets most write-ups don't combine: the near-real-time 80th-percentile numbers from USCIS, and the quarterly pending-inventory and completion data USCIS publishes through its Office of Performance and Quality, current through the FY2025 fourth quarter and the February 2026 monthly report to Congress. You need both. One tells you what people just ahead of you waited. The other tells you whether the queue is getting longer or shorter for people in your category. For the wider picture of what's driving the USCIS backlog in 2025, we've covered that separately.
Last updated: June 2026, using USCIS FY2025 Q4 quarterly data and the February 2026 monthly report. We refresh this page each time USCIS releases new monthly or quarterly data.
Current I-485 processing times at a glance (FY2025 Q4)
Here are the most recent figures from USCIS. The quarterly numbers are the median time for cases USCIS actually completed in the fourth quarter of FY2025; the monthly figures track the national average through February 2026. Your case can run faster or slower depending on the category, the office, and whether you're scheduled for an interview.
Boston, Salt Lake City, Seattle, and Charlotte continue to run the fastest field offices for family-based cases, often finishing well under a year. New York, Newark, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco carry the heaviest caseloads, and their interview backlogs push some cases past two years. For employment-based adjustments, the service centers cleared FY2025 cases in a median of about 7.5 months, faster than most field offices that hold an interview.
Humanitarian-based I-485s split into two very different stories. On the FY2025 Q4 books, refugee adjustments closed in a median of 7.5 months and Cuban Adjustment Act cases in 9.1 months, with asylee adjustments under INA 209 at 11.9 months. Those medians cover only the cases USCIS still managed to finish. By February 2026, with approvals nearly stopped, the running national average for refugee adjustments had distorted upward to roughly 88 months on almost no completions. That figure reflects the approval freeze, not a realistic wait.
How USCIS calculates processing times (and why it's misleading)
The number you see on USCIS's processing times tool is not an average, not a median, and not a promise. It's the 80th-percentile completion time from the prior six months. Twenty percent of cases took longer, some of them much longer. USCIS also explicitly excludes two groups from this figure: cases held up by visa bulletin retrogression, and any case where premium processing applied (premium processing is not available for I-485 at all).
The practical consequences are awkward. Your case can exceed the posted time by many months and still be "within normal processing time" for complaint purposes. If your priority date retrogressed, those waits don't appear in the posted figure at all. And the numbers update monthly with a six-month lag, so a worsening trend only shows up in the tool long after applicants have felt it. The historic processing times table runs through February 28, 2026 and gives a better sense of the trend by category.
I-485 processing time by category
I-485 applicants fall into four reporting buckets in USCIS data: family-based, employment-based, humanitarian-based, and "other." USCIS reports performance quarterly for each through its Office of Performance and Quality. The pattern across FY2025 is one the national average completely hides.
Family-based I-485
Family-based cases are the largest active slice of the pending queue: 543,486 pending at the close of FY2025, essentially flat from the 548,621 pending at the start of the fiscal year. USCIS approved 433,071 family-based I-485s across FY2025, with 149,075 of those in the fourth quarter alone, the strongest quarter of the year. That points to USCIS shifting adjudication capacity toward family cases while other categories were held. Good news for filers in the short term, but the approval pace reflects where USCIS chose to put officers, not a structural speed-up. If you're just starting and want to understand the underlying petition timeline, our I-130 processing time guide covers that piece.
The FY2025 Q4 median for family-based I-485 was about 6 months, and the monthly national average held near 9.2 months through February 2026. Office-level waits vary far more than either figure suggests. Boston and Salt Lake City clear many family cases in well under a year, while Houston, Atlanta, and the New York City offices each carry more than 11,000 pending family cases and run much longer. The single biggest predictor of your wait is which field office is assigned based on your ZIP code at filing.
Employment-based I-485
For employment-based I-485, pending inventory fell 8.1% across FY2025, from 181,732 to 166,945. Receipts dropped too: USCIS received about 24,600 employment-based I-485s during the fourth quarter, well below the first-quarter pace. Demand didn't evaporate. The Department of State compressed filing windows for most of FY2025 by requiring Final Action Dates rather than the more permissive Dates for Filing chart. Applicants literally couldn't file.
April 2026 changed that dynamic abruptly. EB-2 India advanced roughly 10 months in a single bulletin (to July 15, 2014). EB-2 Rest of World, Mexico, and the Philippines became current. Large numbers of previously stuck applicants can now file. For a longer view on how the cutoffs work, see how the Visa Bulletin works; for what's moving right now, our April 2026 Visa Bulletin analysis and May 2026 analysis walk through the movement. DOS has explicitly warned that retrogression later in FY2026 is likely.
The FY2025 Q4 median for employment-based I-485 ran about 7.5 months for completed cases, and the monthly national average sat near 9 months through February 2026. As approvals climbed back through late 2025 and into 2026, that monthly average actually fell from above 14 months the prior September, the opposite of what happened in the frozen humanitarian categories.
Humanitarian-based I-485
Humanitarian-based adjustments saw the biggest swings. Pending inventory grew 68.8% across FY2025, from 291,446 to 491,977. Approvals collapsed: USCIS approved just 19,303 humanitarian I-485s in the fourth quarter, a fraction of the pace earlier in the year. This is not a processing speed issue. It's a policy freeze.
Executive Order 14163 (January 20, 2025) suspended refugee entry under the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. Presidential Proclamation 10998 (December 16, 2025) imposed entry restrictions on certain foreign nationals. By February 2026 the monthly data showed refugee adjustments at 2 approvals nationwide and Cuban Adjustment Act cases at 10, with both categories' running averages distorted far above their real processing pace as a result.
USCIS partially lifted the asylum-benefit hold for non-high-risk nationals on March 30, 2026. For T-visa and U-visa-based AOS, waits sit at 42 months and 14 to 28 months respectively. HRIFA and Cuban Adjustment Act cases are frequently "N/A" at the service-center level, though Cuban adjustments closed in a median of 9.1 months on the FY2025 Q4 books before approvals were held.
Other (HRIFA, Cuban Adjustment, Lautenberg, SIJ, DED)
The smallest category, usually called "All Other AOS" in USCIS historic data, covers HRIFA (Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act), the Cuban Adjustment Act, Lautenberg Amendment filings, Special Immigrant Juvenile cases, diplomats adjusting under INA 101(a)(27)(K), and Deferred Enforced Departure parolees. Pending fell from 49,446 to 41,509 across FY2025. The FY2025 Q4 median for this category ran about 18.5 months, slower than the family and employment buckets but well below the FY2020 peak of 32.7 months, though individual file types can still run much longer.
Service center and field office breakdown
I-485 cases are split between service centers (Nebraska, Texas, Potomac, California) and field offices (83 locations nationwide), with the National Benefits Center acting as a pre-processing hub for most family-based and some employment-based cases. Which office gets your file depends on your category and ZIP code at the time of filing.
Fastest offices (FY2025 Q4): Boston and Salt Lake City for family cases, and the service centers for clean employment files (median about 7.5 months for completed FY2025 cases).
Slowest offices: 26 Federal Plaza in NYC, Newark, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta. These are all high-volume field offices with chronic interview backlogs. Some NYC file-office waits hit 20 to 22 months even for relatively simple marriage-based cases.
A common assumption worth correcting: Texas Service Center is not faster than Nebraska Service Center for EB I-485s. NSC has historically run faster because it grants interview waivers at a higher rate for clean employment files. If you have any choice in the matter (for example, through a concurrent I-140 + I-485 filing where the I-140 is still pending), that detail matters.
If your office is one of the slower ones and you've just filed, expect the biometrics appointment within 2 to 6 weeks of filing, your I-765 EAD around 3 to 5 months, your I-131 Advance Parole around 6 months, and the I-485 interview (if required) anywhere from 8 months to 2+ years later. If you need to reschedule your biometrics, we've written a step-by-step guide to that process.
The FY2025 quarterly trend story
The quarterly data shows something the monthly numbers don't: total I-485 pending grew 16.1% across FY2025, from 1,071,245 cases at the close of Q1 to 1,243,917 at the close of Q4. The growth was lopsided. Almost all of it landed in the humanitarian categories, which were being held, while family and employment pending barely moved.
That pattern would normally suggest a workforce problem or a funding cut. Neither fully explains what happened. USCIS received a steady volume of I-485s each quarter and officers didn't disappear. What changed was the mix of which cases USCIS chose to adjudicate.
Humanitarian approvals fell to 19,303 in the fourth quarter, far below the pace earlier in the year, while family approvals climbed to 149,075, the strongest quarter of FY2025. USCIS moved resources off humanitarian files, which were being held anyway, and onto family files. That's good news if you filed a marriage-based or other family-based I-485 in early 2025. It's catastrophic if you filed a refugee or asylee adjustment.
Employment-based approvals held steadier across the year, ending with about 27,000 in the fourth quarter, but receipts fell. The cause was not falling I-140 demand but locked visa bulletin availability, which tied most filers to the Final Action Dates chart for much of FY2025. The April 2026 forward movement, with EB-2 India up roughly 10 months and EB-2 Rest of World current, is already reversing that receipt trend in real time.
The takeaway for any current applicant: the national 80th-percentile number hides a lot. Your real wait depends on your category, and your category's wait depends on what USCIS is doing with the other three categories that same quarter.
2025 to 2026 policy changes reshaping I-485 processing
Five policy changes in the past year have altered how long your I-485 takes and what happens to you during the wait.
Automatic EAD extensions ended for renewals filed on or after October 30, 2025. Extensions already granted on earlier filings remain valid, but a renewal filed today gets no grace period while the new card is pending.
USCIS briefly increased the maximum EAD validity period to up to 5 years for certain categories, including adjustment applicants under INA 245. Policy alert PA-2025-27 (December 4, 2025) reversed course and capped new adjustment-based EADs at 18 months.
I-693 validity changed on June 11, 2025. USCIS clarified that a Form I-693 signed on or after Nov. 1, 2023, is valid only while the application it was submitted with remains pending. If that underlying application is withdrawn or denied, the I-693 is no longer valid for a future filing. That change does not mean a still-pending I-485 automatically needs a new medical exam solely because time has passed.
Proclamations 10949 and 10998 and the companion USCIS memos. Proclamation 10949 (June 4, 2025) and Proclamation 10998 (December 16, 2025, effective January 1, 2026) impose entry restrictions on 19 full-ban countries and 20 partial-ban countries. The USCIS memos PM-602-0192 and PM-602-0193 translated those restrictions into adjudicative holds on I-485, I-765, I-131, I-751, and I-589 for nationals of affected countries. A federal court vacated the USCIS benefit-hold policies (PM-602-0192, PM-602-0194, and PA-2025-26) on June 5, 2026, so USCIS treats them as not in effect agency-wide and is resuming those adjudications, though the government may appeal. The separate State Department pause on immigrant-visa issuance for 75 countries and the underlying travel-ban proclamations stay in force at the consular stage. For context on the broader landscape, see our coverage of the Trump travel ban and who it affects and the State Department pause on immigrant visa processing for 75 countries.
CSPA reversion (August 15, 2025). USCIS reverted Child Status Protection Act age calculation from the Dates for Filing chart back to the Final Action Dates chart. That narrows the window in which a derivative child's age "freezes" and creates fresh aging-out risk for F2A and EB derivative beneficiaries approaching 21.
Since October 28, 2025, USCIS accepts only electronic payments for paper filings: Form G-1450 for credit or debit card payments, or Form G-1650 for ACH debit from a U.S. bank account. Personal checks, cashier's checks, and money orders are no longer accepted unless you qualify for one of the limited exemptions listed on Form G-1651.
Visa Bulletin coordination: when can you actually file?
Processing time is only half the wait. The other half is waiting for your priority date to become current. For family-based F1, F2A, F2B, F3, and F4 categories, and for all employment-based categories, filing I-485 requires both an immediately available visa number and a current priority date.
USCIS tells you each month which chart you can use, the Final Action Dates chart or the Dates for Filing chart, on its adjustment of status filing charts page. For April 2026, EB-2 India jumped ten months in a single bulletin, and EB-2 Rest of World, Mexico, and the Philippines became current. Those are the largest one-month movements in several years.
The advance is real but somewhat artificial. Proclamations 10949 and 10998 have reduced ROW demand at consular processing posts, freeing visa numbers earlier in the fiscal year than normal. DOS has explicitly warned applicants that retrogression later in FY2026 is a strong possibility. If your priority date is current or near-current, filing sooner rather than later is usually the right move.
One persistent myth worth killing: your priority date becoming current does not speed up an I-485 that's already pending. It only unlocks approval. USCIS cannot approve a case without a visa number available at the moment of decision. If your date retrogresses while you're pending, USCIS will hold your case until it becomes current again.
Companion applications: EAD and Advance Parole
Most I-485 applicants file Form I-765 (work permit, category C09) and Form I-131 (Advance Parole) concurrently. The companion filing fees are $260 for I-765 and $630 for I-131, on top of the $1,440 I-485 fee for applicants 14 and older.
Recent medians for companion applications (early 2026): I-765 C09 around 3.7 months, I-131 around 6.1 months. USCIS often issues the EAD and Advance Parole as separate documents now, so plan for two documents arriving on separate timelines. You can check your EAD application status five different ways once USCIS receipts your I-765.
The renewal math has gotten tighter. With EAD validity cut to 18 months (PA-2025-27) and the 540-day automatic extension removed (October 30, 2025 IFR), a typical I-485 applicant now files an EAD renewal while the original EAD still has 180+ days left. If you wait too long, you stop working. File 6 months ahead of expiration, not later.
Advance Parole travel while I-485 is pending is still available for most filers, but travel on AP after leaving the country requires the I-131 to have been approved before departure. Traveling without an approved AP (unless you hold a separate valid status like H-1B or L-1 with appropriate entry) is treated as abandonment of your I-485.
What to do if your I-485 is past normal processing time
Once your case passes the 80th-percentile figure for your category and office, you can start formal remedies: a USCIS online case inquiry, then the CIS Ombudsman, then a Congressional inquiry, and finally a writ of mandamus in federal court if the delay is unreasonable. Our I-485 expedite request guide walks through each step, the timing, and the costs.
If your concern is the EAD or AP rather than the I-485 itself, USCIS accepts expedite requests for those based on severe financial loss, humanitarian reasons, or DHS interest. The I-485 itself is rarely expedited because premium processing is not available for adjustment of status, and the standard expedite criteria are narrow.
Top misconceptions about I-485 processing time
Several things applicants routinely believe that aren't true:
- "USCIS's posted processing time is my actual wait." It's the 80th percentile, calculated from completed cases in the prior six months, and it excludes visa-regressed cases and premium-processed filings. Complex cases routinely run 2 to 3x the posted figure.
- "Concurrent filing makes my I-485 decision faster." Concurrent filing (filing I-485 at the same time as the I-130 or I-140) only eliminates the gap between I-130/I-140 approval and I-485 filing. The I-485 adjudication time itself is the same.
- "EAD approval means my I-485 is close." Not even a little. EADs adjudicate on a separate track in 3 to 5 months. I-485 decisions commonly come 8 to 14+ months after EAD issuance.
- "A Congressional inquiry will speed up my case." Congressional inquiries typically return "undergoing normal processing" unless the case is genuinely outside posted times and USCIS cannot cite a specific reason for the delay.
- "I-140 premium processing will speed up my I-485." It only speeds up the I-140. Once the I-140 is approved, the I-485 queue position is unaffected. Premium processing is not available for I-485.
- "EAD renewals still auto-extend for 540 days." False for renewals filed on or after October 30, 2025. The interim final rule ended automatic extensions going forward; only extensions already granted on earlier filings remain valid.
- "The 2023 CSPA rule still applies." USCIS reverted on August 15, 2025 to Final Action Dates for CSPA calculation. F2A and EB derivatives near 21 should recalculate immediately.
- "Texas Service Center is faster than Nebraska for EB." Reversed. NSC has historically been faster due to higher interview-waiver rates for clean employment files.
The bottom line
I-485 processing time in 2026 is best understood as a distribution, not a number. Family-based cases finished FY2025 in a median of about 6 months but stretch past two years at several big-city field offices. Employment-based cases ran about 7.5 months at the service centers for completed FY2025 files and run far longer where an interview is required. Humanitarian cases are effectively frozen for many nationalities under the 2025 and 2026 policy memos, which has pushed their monthly running averages well above any realistic wait. The "other" category keeps moving at about 18.5 months for most file types.
Your actual wait comes down to three things: which category you filed under, which USCIS office processes your case, and whether the policy environment has flagged your country or case type for extra review. You can estimate the first two from USCIS data. The third changes faster than USCIS's own processing-time tool updates.
We'll keep this page current as USCIS posts new monthly data, new quarterly Office of Performance and Quality reports, and any further policy memos.
Official Sources
This guide is based on current USCIS policy, federal regulations, and USCIS Office of Performance and Quality quarterly data. All information was verified against these official sources, with processing figures current through FY2025 Q4 and the February 2026 monthly report to Congress:
USCIS Resources
- USCIS Form I-485 Official Page
- Form I-485 Instructions
- USCIS Processing Times Tool
- USCIS Historic Processing Times
- USCIS Processing Times FAQ
- USCIS Immigration & Citizenship Data Portal
- USCIS Policy Manual, Volume 7 (Adjustment of Status)
- USCIS Policy Manual, Volume 8, Part B, Chapter 4 (I-693)
- USCIS AOS Filing Charts from the Visa Bulletin
- USCIS Case Status Online
- USCIS Fee Schedule (Form G-1055)
USCIS Policy Alerts and Memoranda (2025 to 2026)
- I-693 Validity Update (June 11, 2025)
- Discretionary Factors Update (August 19, 2025)
- PM-602-0192, Hold and Review of High-Risk Country Applications (December 2, 2025)
- PA-2025-27, EAD Validity Reduction (December 4, 2025)
- DHS News Release: End of Automatic EAD Extension
- USCIS CSPA Reversion Alert (August 2025)
Federal Regulations
Immigration and Nationality Act
Department of State
Immigration law and USCIS processing data change frequently. We monitor USCIS policy updates, quarterly Office of Performance and Quality reports, and the monthly Visa Bulletin, and revise this guide whenever the underlying numbers or rules shift.