Published November 9, 2026. The figures in this post are dated; USCIS’s numbers change often.
If you filed a petition for your spouse, child or parent (Form I-130) and were told to expect a wait of about a year, and USCIS’s website now says years, you are not imagining it. As of November 7, 2026, USCIS’s processing-times tool says that 80% of petitions by U.S. citizens for a spouse, parent or minor child are completed within 83.5 months at its field offices. That is nearly seven years. USCIS will not take a case inquiry on a petition that is inside that window, and congressional offices are telling people they cannot intervene.
Here is the short answer. The posted time is USCIS’s description of its own pace. It is not a legal deadline, and it is not a prediction for your case. A federal lawsuit can ask a judge whether your whole wait is reasonable, and many such suits end within a few months because USCIS decides the petition. But a suit buys a decision, now usually after an interview at a field office, not an approval. And when the government chooses to fight an I-130 suit, it usually wins. This post explains what changed, what still works, and when we think a lawsuit makes sense. The law of delay suits is covered in depth on our page My immigration case is stuck: can I sue USCIS?
Why does my I-130 suddenly show a wait of years?
Because USCIS moved most pending I-130 petitions from its service centers to its local field offices in the spring of 2026, and the posted processing time now measures the field offices. USCIS’s own quarterly reports show the move. On March 31, 2026, the service centers held about 2.06 million pending I-130s and the field offices about 300,000. By June 30, 2026, the field offices held about 2.26 million and the service centers about 141,000 (USCIS, Form I-130 by category, case status and field office, FY2026 Q2 and Q3). The total number pending barely changed, at about 2.4 million. The same petitions simply sat in a different place.
The processing-times tool reflects the move. As of November 7, 2026, for a U.S. citizen’s petition for a spouse, parent or child under 21, it offered only two choices, “National Benefits Center” (53 months) and “All Field Offices” (83.5 months). For a permanent resident’s petition for a spouse or child under 21, it showed 52 months at the National Benefits Center and 139 months at the field offices (USCIS processing-times tool, read November 7, 2026). No individual field office, including Helena, is listed for the I-130. On June 30, 2026, the Helena field office had 958 I-130s pending, 466 of them for immediate relatives.
The processing-times page carries only a general alert that service-center processing times are being relisted. We have not seen a USCIS announcement explaining the I-130 move; most people learned of it when the tool’s numbers changed.
Processing times shown are a snapshot as of the date indicated, taken from the USCIS processing-times tool. They change constantly, and we do not update articles continuously to track them. Before making decisions, check the current time for your form and office at egov.uscis.gov/processing-times.
Is the posted time accurate for my case?
Probably not, and it can be wrong in either direction. The tool’s own note explains what the number is: how long it took USCIS to finish 80% of the cases it completed over the past six months. It is a measure of finished cases, not a forecast for yours.
USCIS also publishes a second number that tells a different story. Its historic table puts the national median for immediate-relative I-130s at 12.8 months for fiscal year 2026, through August 30, 2026, and 14.4 months for fiscal year 2025 (USCIS, historical national median processing times). A median means half the cases took less time and half took more.
Our reading of the two numbers, and it is our inference, not something USCIS has said: field offices have long received the I-130s that needed an interview or had a problem; USCIS’s Policy Manual says service centers refer petitions that require an interview to the local field office. When those offices finish old, hard cases first, the “80% within” figure for the last six months is pulled toward the slowest cases. The first months after a reorganization are likely to overstate the wait for a routine petition. They may also understate it for a petition that has drawn an officer’s concern. We would not plan around 83.5 months, and we would not plan around 12.8 either.
Why can’t I ask USCIS or my congressional office about my case?
Because both are tied to the posted time. USCIS’s online “case outside normal processing time” inquiry opens only when your case is outside the posted window. On November 7, 2026, we entered a receipt date of November 7, 2025 into the tool for a U.S. citizen’s spouse petition at the field offices. It answered that the case “is processing normally” and that the earliest date to submit questions was April 4, 2035. That date is later than the 83.5 months alone would suggest, and we do not know why the two differ. Either way, the door is closed for years.
Congressional caseworkers generally run into the same wall. Our page on congressional inquiries for immigration cases explains that when a case is within USCIS’s published times, an inquiry usually produces only a status confirmation. A petitioner who came to us this fall had been told at filing to expect a little over a year. The posted time has since grown to years, USCIS will not accept a service request until near the end of the decade, and the Senator’s office said it could not intervene.
Two things still work. An expedite request is a separate route with its own criteria, such as severe financial loss or an urgent humanitarian situation, and USCIS decides each one at its discretion (USCIS Policy Manual, Vol. 1, Part A, Ch. 5). And every attempt you make, with its date and the answer you got, becomes evidence if you later go to court. A judge weighing a delay asks whether you tried the normal channels and what the delay is costing you.
Can I sue USCIS over an I-130 delay now?
Yes. USCIS has a duty to decide your petition, and a federal court can order it to act on a petition that has been “unreasonably delayed” (5 U.S.C. § 706(1)). What the court cannot do is order an approval. Congress has said a benefit application “should be completed not later than 180 days” after filing, but that sentence is framed as the “sense of Congress,” a goal rather than a deadline (8 U.S.C. § 1571(b)). The Ninth Circuit, which covers Montana and Idaho, has described unreasonable delays as ones that “involve[] delays of years, not months” (In re A Community Voice, 878 F.3d 779 (9th Cir. 2017), quoting an earlier Ninth Circuit case). That case concerned an eight-year delay by the EPA, not an immigration petition. Our delay-suit guide covers the six factors courts weigh and how they differ across our states.
What the court records show is a two-sided picture.
- Most suits end fast, without a ruling. Of more than 15,000 federal delay suits against USCIS filed since January 2024 (all forms, not only I-130s), about 84% of those with a known outcome ended in a voluntary or agreed dismissal, at a median of 84 days after filing (Federal Judicial Center and CourtListener docket data, through November 7, 2026). A dismissal of that kind usually does not say why. Often the agency decided the case; sometimes it scheduled an interview; sometimes it denied.
- When the government fights, it usually wins. By our count, of 38 written federal district court decisions in I-130 delay suits from January through early November 2026, the government prevailed in 21 and the petitioner in 2; most of the rest were mooted, transferred or settled. District court decisions do not bind other courts, but they show the trend.
Three of those decisions show how the government wins. In Illinois, a court dismissed a suit over an immediate-relative petition pending a little over 21 months, noting that the petitioner had alleged no facts to show the wait was “more unreasonable than others waiting in the same line” (Mohamed v. Mullin, No. 1:26-cv-04541 (N.D. Ill. Sept. 9, 2026)). The petitioner had not responded to the government’s motion. The court relied on a Seventh Circuit decision about a different benefit, holding that a U visa petitioner who sued after waiting a year and a half for placement on the waiting list had not shown unreasonable delay, in part because USCIS had just begun sending those petitions to a second service center and the change would take time to be felt (Calderon-Ramirez v. McCament, 877 F.3d 272, 276 (7th Cir. 2017)). Expect the government to make the same “we just reorganized” argument about the field-office move.
In Maryland, a court dismissed a suit at about 16.5 months using the family’s own figures for the posted time against them: if 80% of petitions are finished within 58.5 months, it reasoned, a 16.5-month wait cannot plausibly be unreasonable (Reyes Davila v. Edlow, No. 1:25-cv-03953 (D. Md. July 16, 2026)). In New York, the government argued that a petition pending about 15 months was well within posted processing times, and the court dismissed (Ghafar v. USCIS, No. 1:25-cv-06698 (E.D.N.Y. Sept. 23, 2026)). That is the irony of the new numbers. The posted time is not a legal limit, but the government will cite it, and a larger posted number makes a short wait look normal. A complaint has to plead a better yardstick, such as USCIS’s own 12.8-month median, the reason the petition has not moved, and the harm the wait is causing. Even then, the median alone has not been enough: the Maryland court had a 12.9-month median before it and still dismissed, and Illinois courts have said they rarely, if ever, find a wait of less than two years unreasonable.
As of November 2026 we found only one written District of Montana decision in a delay suit over a USCIS benefit, a 2017 U visa case dismissed as moot, and none deciding whether a delay was unreasonable.
When does our firm file, and what do we tell clients?
We now file at about one year, when the petition is otherwise a good candidate. That is a choice about when to file, not a claim that a year is unreasonable as a matter of law, and we tell clients the difference before they pay anything. The argument we make is that USCIS’s own record sets the norm: a national median of about 13 to 14 months for these petitions in fiscal years 2025 and 2026. A wait well past that norm calls for an explanation the agency has not given. Filing does not guarantee that a court will weigh the TRAC factors our way, or that what colleagues see in one district will happen in another. Written decisions have not yet found a one-year wait unreasonable; our approach counts on the suit prompting a decision, not on winning the motion to dismiss.
Our reasons are practical. Other immigration lawyers report that in the Northern District of Illinois, suits filed at about a year usually end with the government’s lawyer arranging for the petition to be decided. That is what we hear from colleagues, not a record we have seen ourselves. We will keep filing at about a year unless lawyers in other districts report that the approach is failing. The goal we explain to clients is simple: file, and let the Assistant U.S. Attorney help get the petition decided, approved or, for a family abroad, sent on so the visa can be issued.
We also tell them what happens if the government does not fold. If it files a motion to dismiss, the six delay factors come into play, and answering that motion is real legal work that costs real money. If we win that round, the case is in good shape. And sometimes the government decides the petition when our reply is due. One family hired us this fall when their petition had been pending about a year and a half; that is the kind of case where we would now file.
Not every petition at a year is a good candidate. A wait that is long and unexplained, a petition that is plainly approvable, and a concrete harm all help. A petition that has drawn an officer’s concern, or a beneficiary who should not be interviewed yet (see the next sections), may call for a different plan.
Which I-130 cases make the strongest lawsuits?
The strongest is a preference petition whose priority date is current and that USCIS has still not decided. The tool’s own note says USCIS service centers are prioritizing preference petitions for which the Visa Bulletin shows an immigrant visa is available. In our view, when a petition with a visa available sits undecided, USCIS is not following its own stated order, and the “rule of reason” defense that usually protects it is weakest.
Here is an example from our office, with details changed. Permanent-resident parents petitioned for their son, who had left the United States with his mother while still a minor, before any unlawful presence counted against him. His priority date is current. The petition is still undecided, so consular processing cannot start. Every month of delay is a month the family is apart for no reason the law requires.
If a child in that position is close to 21, a law called the Child Status Protection Act takes his age on the date a visa becomes available and subtracts the time the petition was pending, so the delay itself does not usually cost him his place as a child. But he must seek to acquire permanent residence within one year of the visa becoming available, or he can lose that protection (8 U.S.C. § 1153(h)).
What can a lawsuit bring that I did not ask for?
An interview, a closer look at the file, and for some beneficiaries, a removal case. Now that most I-130s sit at field offices, the likeliest response to a suit is an interview notice, for the petitioner and, if the beneficiary is in the United States, for the beneficiary too. USCIS may interview either or both at any stage, and its Policy Manual lists when an interview is required, for example when the evidence of the marriage is thin or the record has inconsistencies (USCIS Policy Manual, Vol. 6, Part B, Ch. 5; 8 CFR 103.2(b)(9)).
The same chapter warns that “a family-based petition accords no immigration status nor does it bar removal,” and that if USCIS finds the beneficiary removable and amenable to removal it may issue a Notice to Appear in immigration court. In one 2026 California case, a beneficiary who already had a final removal order was arrested by ICE at the airport on his way to the first scheduled I-130 interview, on a petition pending about three and a half years; the court held it had no power to stop the removal and denied emergency relief (Malik v. Wilson, No. 1:26-cv-08145 (E.D. Cal. Oct. 21, 2026)). An old removal order does not go away because an I-130 is pending. If the person you petitioned for is in the United States without status, get advice before anyone takes a step that will produce an interview.
The suit also puts your file on someone’s desk. A prior visa refusal, a misstatement or an old arrest will be seen. Our four case stories on suing USCIS include one suit that got a decision that did not solve the family’s problem, and one that surfaced a fraud finding. For a spouse already in removal proceedings, see our pages on marriage during removal proceedings and the I-601A provisional waiver.
Can a K-3 visa get my spouse here faster?
Almost certainly not. The K-3 visa lets the foreign spouse of a U.S. citizen enter while the I-130 is pending, but in practice it is close to unused. The State Department issued 3 K-3 visas and no K-4 visas (for the K-3’s children) in fiscal year 2024 (Report of the Visa Office 2024, Table XV(B)). For couples who are not yet married, our K-1 fiancé visa guide explains the fiancé route, which is a separate petition.
I live abroad. Can I file at the U.S. consulate instead?
Only in an emergency. A consulate can accept a U.S. citizen’s I-130 for a spouse, minor child or parent only in limited exceptional circumstances, such as a sudden military deployment, a medical emergency or a threat to personal safety, or under a temporary blanket authorization after a disaster. The State Department’s manual says such filings must be truly urgent, for situations where filing with USCIS with an expedite request would not be enough (9 FAM 504.2-4). A slow USCIS queue is not one of them. Once a petition is approved, our page on checking your NVC case status covers the next stage.
What should I do now if my I-130 has been pending a year or more?
Start a written record today: the receipt notice, every inquiry and response, every expedite request, and a short timeline. Check whether your petition falls into one of the stronger patterns: a preference petition with a current priority date, a long unexplained wait, or a concrete harm. Then decide, with advice, whether the beneficiary is safe to interview, because that is what a suit will most likely produce. Our overview of family-based green cards explains the petition itself, and our federal court overview shows the other kinds of federal cases we handle.
If you want us to look at your case, bring those papers to a strategy consultation. The first question we will answer is not whether you can sue, but whether a decision now will get your family where it is trying to go. Contact us to arrange one.
