Methodology

Every number on this site is either copied directly from a government publication or computed from those copied numbers by simple arithmetic, defined once here.

Where the source data comes from

Final action dates and dates for filing come from the monthly Visa Bulletin published by the U.S. Department of State. Most bulletins on this site were recovered from archived copies of the page at web.archive.org; the current month is captured directly from the live page by a person, using a browser bookmarklet, because the Department of State's site returns an automated-traffic error to scripted requests. Every bulletin page on this site (browse them here) links back to its own source, and to an archived copy when that's how it was recovered, so any figure can be checked against the original.

Processing times, case volumes, and pending counts for individual USCIS forms come from USCIS's own quarterly report, "Number of Service-wide Forms By Quarter, Form Status, and Processing Time," downloaded by hand from the USCIS Data Library (USCIS's site returns the same automated-traffic error, so this is not fetched by script either). Every number from that report is checked against the report's own total row before it is published here; a workbook that doesn't reconcile is not used.

Nothing on this site is estimated, interpolated, or filled in to cover a gap. A missing month means the bulletin for that month could not be found in the archive and has not yet been captured; it is left out, not guessed at.

Final action date and date for filing

These are the Visa Bulletin's own two columns, reproduced exactly as published. A final action date is the priority date cutoff for a green card to actually be approved and issued that month. A date for filing, published separately since October 2015, is the earlier cutoff at which an adjustment of status application can be submitted, ahead of final approval. Current means the category is not backlogged for that country this month; Unavailable means the category received no visas that month regardless of priority date. Both designations are the bulletin's own words, not a description we add.

Backlog years

The bulletin's own month minus its published final action date, in years. If the September 2026 bulletin's final action date for a category is January 2020, the backlog is measured in the years between those two dates. This is a description of where the cutoff sits today, not a wait-time prediction for anyone who files now: someone filing today joins the queue behind everyone with an earlier priority date, and how long they'll actually wait depends on future pace, which the backlog figure alone doesn't capture.

Pace, and projected wait

Pace is the average number of days the final action date moved, per bulletin, over the trailing 12 bulletins shown on the category pages. A positive pace means the cutoff is advancing toward the present; a negative pace means it's moving backwards. Projected wait takes the most recent 24 bulletins' pace and asks how many months it would take, at that pace, for today's cutoff to reach today's date — which is the same as asking how long someone filing today would wait if nothing about demand or the annual quota changed. Projections above 50 years are suppressed: at that distance the arithmetic says more about the trailing pace than about the queue, so the page shows no figure rather than an absurd one.

Retrogression

A retrogression is any bulletin where the final action date moved backwards from the prior month, or went from a published date to Unavailable. It means people who were about to become eligible went back into the queue. Category pages that have had one show the full list, with the number of days lost where that's calculable.

USCIS processing times

Received, approved, denied, completed, and pending counts on each form's page are USCIS's own quarterly totals, not derived figures.

Waitlist counts

USCIS also publishes, separately from the quarterly forms report, a count of approved petitions by category and country still awaiting visa availability. This site has that data (data/uscis/employment-waitlist/, data/uscis/family-waitlist/) but does not yet have a page built from it. When it does, this is what the count will and won't mean:

Found a figure that looks wrong, or a discrepancy against the published source? Email data@visabacklog.com with the page and we'll check it against the original.