The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) ended its FY2026 third quarter with 1,560,290 pending green card applications, as receipts outnumbered decisions by 124,623 over the three-month period.
USCIS's FY2026 third-quarter report shows the pending count stood at 1,437,210 on March 31 and climbed by 123,080 by June 30. From April 1 to June 30, the agency received 242,989 Form I-485 applications and decided 118,366.
USCIS approved 101,568 cases and denied 16,798, with approvals representing 85.8% of decisions.
Form I-485, Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status, is used by people in the United States to seek lawful permanent resident status, commonly called a green card.
At June 30, pending applications included 611,067 family-based cases and 342,360 Cuban adjustment cases. Employment-based cases totaled 268,408; refugee cases, 149,470; asylum cases, 126,267; and other categories, 62,718.
Florida's nine field offices had 265,495 pending cases, compared with 161,398 at California field offices and 140,743 at Texas field offices. Tampa had 46,609, Kendall 45,973 and Hialeah 43,153. These figures count cases by the USCIS office handling them, not by applicants' home state.
USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler told Newsweek: “U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will never sacrifice quality and screening for speed.” The report provides a quarter-end count, not individual waiting times, and does not identify why receipts exceeded decisions.
