While President Trump has kept the spotlight on illegal immigration, legal immigration has also been disrupted—through policy changes and bureaucratic slowdowns. At the same time, delayed data releases have obscured how federal agencies are currently operating, limiting public insight. Below, I analyze the most recent data available, current as of June 30, 2026.
Contents
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
- Subset of processing data for April 2026
- All forms processing data for October through December 2025
- Median processing times through April 30, 2026
- Consular wait times as of June 18, 2026
- IV and NIV monthly visa issuances for September 2025
- PERM Processing Times as of March 31, 2026
Immigration and Customs Enforcement
- International student records through June 2026
National Travel and Tourism Office
- Trends in overseas visitors through May 2026
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) oversees the administration of legal immigration by adjudicating applications and petitions for benefits such as work authorization, citizenship, and legal permanent residence (green card status).
Comprehensive processing data for all USCIS forms is only available through December 2025, but a smaller dataset provides updated details through April 2026.
Key takeaways from the April 2026 USCIS processing data:
- Key takeaways from the April 2026 USCIS processing data:
- In April 2026, USCIS completed only 27,569 applications for naturalization. By comparison, in April 2025, USCIS completed over 97,000, and in the 12 months prior to that, USCIS completed an average of over 78,000 per month. The average processing time for an N-400, Application for Naturalization was 9.5 months in April 2026, compared to 6.4 months one year prior.
- In April 2026, 18 percent of naturalization completions were denials, more than double the rate of denials in April 2025. .
- Among the reported form types, USCIS received 320,000 fewer filings in April 2026 than in April 2025. Even still, in April 2026, USCIS completed just 40% as many cases as it did in April 2025, allowing the number of cases that had been pending for over 6 months to balloon to 5.4 million in April 2026, dwarfing the 3.6 million pending for over 6 months as of a year prior.
For all USCIS forms, processing data is only currently available through the first quarter of fiscal year 2026, or October through December 2025.
Key takeaways from the FY2026 Q1 USCIS data:
- FY2026 Q1 ended with 11.3 million cases pending at USCIS, a 17 percent increase over the end of FY2025 Q1.
- USCIS completed just 1.8 million cases in Q1, a 41% decrease from the year prior and a 28% decrease from the quarter prior.
- By the end of Q1, the net backlog (backlogged cases within the government’s control) totalled 6.3 million backlogged cases, compared to less than 4.3 million at the end of FY2025 Q1.
- The frontlog (unopened cases received by USCIS) numbered 197,684 cases at the end of Q1. At the end of FY2025 Q1, the frontlog was 0. .
- Consistent with latest trends, the active DACA population dropped by 10,620 individuals between FY2025 Q4 and FY2026 Q1.
- The processing time for an application for employment authorization based on DACA more than tripled between FY2025 Q1 and FY2026 Q1.
- The processing time for an I-90, Application to Replace Permanent Resident Card increased by over 1000% between FY2025 Q1 and FY2026 Q1. Its processing time nearly doubled between FY2025 Q4 and FY2026 Q1 alone.
Real-time USCIS processing data isn’t easily accessible in aggregate, but annual median processing times still offer valuable insight into broader trends.
Key takeaways from the median processing times:
- The median processing times for many application and petition form types have increased since last reporting.
- At the end of FY2025, the median processing time for an I-730, Asylee Relative Petition was 10.9 months. For FY2026, the median processing time is 18.5 months as of April 30, 2026.
- At the end of FY2025, the median processing time for an I-914, the application for victims of human trafficking, was 20.8 months. By April 30, 2026, the FY2026 median processing time was reported as 28.2 months.
Department of State
The Department of State (DOS) issues visas to foreign nationals abroad, leveraging interviews and other vetting tools to protect the integrity and security of legal immigration.
Key takeaways from consular wait times:
- Consular wait times have fluctuated sharply in recent months as new vetting procedures—such as social media reviews and duplicative interview requirements—have taken effect. While some posts have managed to lower wait times in spite of these changes, other locations have seen steep increases in estimated wait times.
- Notes regarding data consistencies: Between January 2025 and April 2025, the Department of State consular wait time data changed formats. Data that was once reported in days is now published only in rounded months. For consistency, January 2025 figures have been converted into approximate months to allow comparison. Additionally, in September 2025, the Department of State began labeling any value less than 0.5 as “<0.5,” rather than providing the specific value or rounding down.
Key takeaways from the consular visa issuance statistics
- U.S. consulates issued 11% fewer nonimmigrant visas in September 2025 than in September 2024.
- Compared to September 2024, consulates issued 64 percent fewer K-1 visas for fiancés of U.S. citizens in September 2025.
- U.S. consulates issued 18 percent fewer F-1 student visas and 25 percent fewer H-1B specialty occupation visas in September 2025 compared to September 2024.
- U.S. consulates issued 21% fewer immigrant visas in September 2025 than in September 2024.
Department of Labor
The Department of Labor (DOL) oversees multiple labor certification and prevailing wage processes that were designed to protect American workers and uphold minimum standards for the employment of foreign nationals sponsored on employment visas.
Key takeaways from the PERM processing times
- Following record highs, PERM processing times have reported two months of decline, reaching 501 days as of April 23, 2026. Though these processing times remain disruptively high, they are an improvement over the 512 days reported as of February 9, 2026.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Beyond leading the interior enforcement efforts, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) also administers SEVIS, (the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System used by international students and cultural exchange visitors).
Key takeaways from the SEVIS records
- Latest data continues to reflect year-over-year declines in active SEVIS records.
- As of June 2026, there were 52,750 fewer active international student records overall and 35,682 fewer STEM-enrolled international student records compared to June 2026.
National Travel and Tourism Office
The National Travel and Tourism Office, part of the International Trade Administration, tracks data on international travel to and from the United States.
Key takeaways from the overseas visitor numbers
- Overseas visitor numbers for April and May 2026 far underperformed the year prior. In April 2026 alone, the U.S. welcomed over 430,000 fewer overseas visitors.
- In the first five months of 2026, the U.S. received over 620,000 fewer overseas visitors compared to the same time last year.
- The International Trade Administration that publishes this data says that every 40 international visits supports 1 U.S. job. At that rate, the U.S. could have missed out on over 15,600 American jobs in early 2026 as a result of tourism declines. World Cup tourism beginning in June 2026 may be able to rebound this datapoint.
ARCHIVE: Previous updates to the “Legal immigration in numbers” series are available for download here.
