Introduction
USCIS has released its fiscal year 2026 second-quarter data on Form I-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Workers, revealing that approximately 175,000 petitions are currently sitting in a pending backlog — the largest unresolved queue the agency has reported in the dataset’s twelve-year history. The data, compiled by the USCIS Office of Performance and Quality and queried in April 2026, covers every petition received from fiscal year 2014 through the second quarter of fiscal year 2026. For foreign workers, employers, and HR teams navigating the I-140 petition backlog, the numbers paint a picture of a system under sustained and growing strain across all three major employment-based preference categories.
Background
What Form I-140 Does and Why Backlogs Matter
Form I-140 is the foundational document in most employment-based green card cases. An employer — or in certain self-petition categories, the worker — files it with USCIS to establish that a specific foreign national qualifies for an immigrant visa in one of the preference categories: EB-1 for priority workers, EB-2 for professionals with advanced degrees or those seeking a National Interest Waiver, and EB-3 for skilled workers, professionals, and unskilled workers. Approval of an I-140 does not grant a green card; it secures a priority date and confirms eligibility. The actual immigrant visa or adjustment of status still depends on the Department of State’s monthly Visa Bulletin and whether a visa number is available for the applicant’s country of birth.
Because the I-140 is the gateway to priority date protection, delays in adjudication have downstream consequences far beyond the petition itself. Workers waiting on pending I-140s often cannot fully leverage their priority dates, and in some cases cannot take advantage of certain portability protections or extensions of status that depend on an approved petition.
What the Data Shows
A Sharp Rise in Pending Petitions Across All Categories
The USCIS dataset covers approximately 2,009,857 total I-140 petitions filed between FY2014 and the close of FY2026’s second quarter. Of those, roughly 1,668,312 have been approved, 166,780 have been denied, and approximately 174,765 remain pending — a figure USCIS labels “Pending, Other,” which includes cases awaiting a decision as of the end of the reporting period as well as those updated as administrative closures.
The pending figure has grown dramatically in recent years. Through FY2022, annual pending totals for each cohort rarely exceeded a few hundred to low thousands. By FY2024, the pending count for that single fiscal year’s filings had reached approximately 34,829. For FY2025, it climbed to 78,376. For FY2026 through just the second quarter, approximately 49,100 petitions from that year alone are already pending — meaning a very large share of recently filed cases have not yet been adjudicated.
Breaking this down by preference category adds further texture. Among EB-1 petitions, roughly 39,415 are currently pending across all fiscal years, with 15,921 of those from FY2025 filings alone and 13,966 from the partial FY2026 cohort. EB-2 carries the heaviest backlog overall, with approximately 91,189 petitions pending across the dataset — including 42,265 from FY2025 and 24,646 from FY2026. EB-3 accounts for approximately 44,089 pending petitions, with 20,190 from FY2025 and 10,488 from FY2026.
The data also notes that the top five source countries by total FY2026 receipts are India, China, the Philippines, Brazil, and Vietnam — a ranking that, given longstanding per-country visa limits, has significant implications for how long approved petitions will ultimately translate into available visa numbers.
Who Is Affected
Workers, Employers, and Entire Sectors Feeling the Pressure
Foreign nationals currently in the I-140 petition process — whether they filed independently through a National Interest Waiver self-petition or through an employer sponsor — are the most directly affected group. Workers from high-demand countries, particularly India and China, face the longest waits not only for I-140 adjudication but for the visa availability that follows approval, given per-country annual limits that can push backlogs into decades for certain categories.
Employers in technology, healthcare, research, and other sectors that rely heavily on EB-2 and EB-3 sponsorship are indirectly but meaningfully affected. Workforce planning becomes significantly more complex when the adjudication timeline for a petition that was once relatively predictable stretches into multiple quarters or longer. HR teams managing compliance, work authorization extensions, and employee retention strategies all feel the ripple effects of an expanding backlog.
Self-petitioners — particularly those pursuing the EB-1A extraordinary ability or EB-2 NIW pathways — are also caught in the same queue, even though they do not require employer sponsorship. The data shows that NIW approvals have grown substantially over the past decade, rising from approximately 4,717 in FY2014 to a peak near 29,092 in FY2023, which itself helps explain why the pending load in EB-2 is now the largest of any preference category.
Practical Implications
What the Backlog Means for Filing Strategy and Planning
The most immediate practical takeaway is that anyone who has not yet filed an I-140 should be aware that the time between filing and adjudication appears to be extending, particularly for FY2025 and FY2026 cohorts where a significant portion of cases remain unresolved. Establishing the earliest possible priority date remains critical, especially for nationals of countries with heavily oversubscribed categories, because the priority date — not the approval date — determines position in the visa queue.
For workers currently on H-1B or other nonimmigrant status, a pending I-140 can support certain extensions of status beyond the standard limits under AC21 portability provisions, but only an approved I-140 unlocks the full range of those protections. The distinction between a pending and an approved petition matters practically, and the data suggests that recent filers may be waiting longer than their predecessors did for that approval milestone.
Premium processing, where available for specific I-140 categories, may be worth considering for cases where timing is sensitive. USCIS has expanded premium processing eligibility incrementally over the past few years, and for some EB-1 and EB-2 categories it can significantly compress the adjudication window — though it does not guarantee approval and carries its own costs.
The denial rate trend also deserves attention. In FY2024, USCIS denied approximately 23,155 I-140 petitions — the highest single-year denial count in the dataset. FY2025 saw a comparable figure of 22,986. This suggests that evidentiary standards or adjudication patterns may have shifted, making the quality of petition preparation more consequential than it was in years when denial rates were lower.
What to Watch For Next
USCIS is expected to release updated quarterly data as FY2026 progresses, which will allow observers to track whether the pending backlog continues growing or whether adjudication capacity improves. Stakeholders should also monitor the monthly Visa Bulletin from the Department of State, which governs visa availability and interacts directly with I-140 approval status. Any administrative policy changes affecting premium processing eligibility, staffing at adjudication centers, or processing priorities would also be relevant to how quickly the current backlog resolves. Further guidance on processing timelines has not been announced as part of this data release.
How Immigration Professional Association Can Help
The I-140 petition backlog creates real uncertainty for workers and employers at every stage of the employment-based immigration process — from deciding when and how to file, to understanding what a pending petition does and does not protect, to navigating the increasingly significant denial rate trends visible in this data. Immigration Professional Association works directly with both individual petitioners and employer sponsors across EB-1, EB-2, and EB-3 categories, including those pursuing the National Interest Waiver pathway independently.
Whether you are an employer evaluating when to initiate sponsorship for a current employee, a researcher or professional considering a self-petition, or a foreign national already deep in the process and trying to understand what the current backlog means for your specific timeline, the team at Immigration Professional Association can help you assess your situation with current, data-grounded guidance. Contact us to discuss your I-140 strategy in light of what the FY2026 data is showing — the numbers have shifted, and your approach should reflect that.
