EB-2 NIW Approval Rates Fell From 95.7% to 45.5%: What the USCIS Data Shows

Reviewed by: Beth Persky

In fiscal year 2022, USCIS approved 95.7 percent of the EB-2 national interest waiver petitions it decided. In the first half of fiscal year 2026, it approved 45.5 percent. Denials outnumbered approvals across those two quarters, 6,486 to 5,410.

Every count in this article comes from official USCIS Form I-140 adjudication data. The rates do not. USCIS publishes counts of petitions received, approved, denied, and pending, but it does not publish an approval rate, so every rate on this page was calculated by USA Immigration Lawyer from the published counts. The method is set out below the table, because different methods produce materially different numbers and several rates circulating online are not comparable with one another.

EB-2 NIW adjudications by fiscal year

*Counts are as published by USCIS. “Decided” and both rates are calculated by USA Immigration Lawyer, not published by USCIS.

Among the completed fiscal years, FY2022 through FY2025, the approval rate declined three years in a row, from 95.7 percent to 79.6, then 71.0, then 55.2 percent. The first half of FY2026 sits lower again at 45.5 percent, though as a partial-year figure it is not directly comparable to the full years above it. Every year-over-year comparison in the series is a decline, and the total drop across the series is roughly fifty percentage points.

How these rates were calculated

USCIS publishes four counts per period: received, approved, denied, and pending. It does not publish an approval rate. The rates in the table above were calculated as follows.

1. Decided = approved + denied. Only petitions that reached a decision in the period.
2. Approval rate = approved divided by decided. Denial rate = denied divided by decided. The two sum to 100 percent.

Approvals were deliberately not divided by receipts. Petitions received in a period may not be decided in that same period, and USCIS states in its own report notes that petitions received in one reporting period may be approved or denied in subsequent periods. Dividing approvals by receipts therefore compares two different populations and produces a figure that reflects processing speed as much as adjudication outcomes. That is one reason published EB-2 NIW rates differ so widely between sources.

Four limitations in the underlying data are worth stating plainly, and USCIS notes each of them in its own reports.

• Petitions approved or denied in a period may have been received in earlier periods, so a fiscal year’s rate reflects decisions made that year, not the outcome of petitions filed that year.
• Counts can change between reporting periods because of system updates and post-adjudicative outcomes.
• Some actions, such as administrative closures, withdrawals, and transfers between offices, are not reflected in the counts.
• Because a petitioner may file more than one petition, the counts are of petitions rather than of people, and requests for evidence are not counted at all. A petition that received an RFE and was later approved appears only as an approval.

The pattern quarter by quarter

Annual figures smooth over the shape of the decline. The table below gives the underlying counts and the approval rate for every quarter in the series, calculated on the same basis as the annual table: approvals divided by the total of approvals and denials.

*Counts are as published by USCIS. “Decided” and both rates are calculated by USA Immigration Lawyer, not published by USCIS.

Each complete year ends lower than it began

In every complete year from FY2023 onward, the approval rate is lower in the fourth quarter than in the first. FY2023 ran from 85.0% down to 72.3%, FY2024 from 76.7% to 61.2%, and FY2025 from 62.7% to 35.7%. The first-quarter-to-fourth-quarter decline also widened each year, from 12.7 points, to 15.5 points, to 27.0 points. The path within a year is not strictly downhill; FY2025 Q2, for example, came in above FY2025 Q1, and FY2026 Q2 came in above FY2026 Q1.

Each year opens higher than the previous year closed

The first quarter of FY2024 came in above the fourth quarter of FY2023, and the same held at the FY2024 to FY2025 and FY2025 to FY2026 boundaries. The rate steps up at the start of a fiscal year, and each complete year has then ended lower than it began.

USCIS does not publish an explanation for this, and none should be assumed. It is a pattern in the data rather than a stated policy, and it is worth knowing mainly because a figure quoted from a fourth quarter and a figure quoted from a first quarter are not comparable in the way they are usually presented.

The lowest quarter so far, and two higher quarters since

The fourth quarter of FY2025 is the lowest quarter in the series at 35.7%, and it was the first quarter in which USCIS denied more EB-2 NIW petitions than it approved. Both reported quarters since have been higher, at 42.5% and then 48.1%. Two rising quarters do not establish a trend, and a lower future quarter remains possible.

What changed?

The governing precedent did not. The national interest waiver is still adjudicated under the three-prong analysis in Matter of Dhanasar, 26 I&N Dec. 884 (AAO 2016), and that decision has not been superseded. The ultimate decision to grant or deny the waiver is discretionary, as USCIS’s Policy Manual and Dhanasar itself describe it.

Two changes in the record are documented: filing volume roughly tripled, and USCIS updated its policy guidance in January 2025. Whether adjudication itself became stricter is an inference drawn from the outcome data, not something USCIS has stated, and it should be read that way throughout this article.

Policy guidance was updated in January 2025

On January 15, 2025, USCIS updated its Policy Manual guidance on EB-2 NIW petitions. The update explains how USCIS evaluates the threshold question of eligibility for the underlying EB-2 classification, how a petitioner relying on exceptional ability must show that the exceptional ability relates to the proposed endeavor, and how USCIS considers evidence such as letters of support and business plans. USCIS describes the update as a clarification of how the Dhanasar framework is applied, not a new or higher legal standard.

The waiver sits on top of a threshold requirement

Before USCIS reaches the Dhanasar analysis at all, the petitioner must establish eligibility for the underlying EB-2 classification, either as a member of the professions holding an advanced degree or as a person of exceptional ability, and where exceptional ability is claimed, it must relate to the proposed endeavor. The petitioner bears the burden of proving eligibility by a preponderance of the evidence and must establish eligibility as of the time of filing. A petition can fail on the threshold classification without the waiver analysis ever being reached.

Filing volume roughly tripled

USCIS received 21,973 NIW petitions in FY2022 and 66,276 in FY2025. Pending petitions grew from 18,599 at the end of FY2022 to 89,215 at the end of the second quarter of FY2026, close to a fivefold increase.

A larger applicant pool is not by itself an explanation for a lower approval rate, but it can change the composition of what is filed. As a category becomes widely known, filings may spread across a broader range of profiles, which would lower the aggregate rate without any change in the standard applied to a strong case. That is an inference about filing behavior, not something the data directly shows.

National importance recurs in published appeal decisions

In the non-precedent decisions the Administrative Appeals Office publishes on EB-2 NIW appeals, national importance under Dhanasar’s first prong is a recurring dispositive issue. These decisions bind only the parties to the individual matters; they illustrate adjudicative reasoning but do not create generally binding rules. The position they take, following Dhanasar itself, is that the relevant question is not the importance of the industry or profession in which the person will work; the analysis focuses on the specific proposed endeavor and its potential prospective impact.

A related theme concerns evidence of impact. The petitioner must support assertions with relevant, probative, and credible evidence, and published decisions include examples where generalized statements that work is important were found insufficient without documentation tying outcomes to the individual.

How letters of support are weighed

USCIS’s January 2025 guidance addresses how letters of support are evaluated. The weight a letter carries turns on its specificity, the writer’s basis of knowledge, and whether it is corroborated by other evidence in the record, rather than on the writer’s independence alone. Published AAO decisions include examples where conclusory letters, including letters from collaborators and letters that praise a field rather than address the Dhanasar prongs, were found insufficient, and where detailed, well-founded letters were credited. Independent letters are not required, and no letter is treated as presumptive proof.

The relationship with EB-1A may have shifted

For most of the period covered here, the national interest waiver produced a higher approval rate than EB-1A when calculated from the same USCIS I-140 dataset. Calculations from that dataset indicate that NIW denial rates exceeded EB-1A denial rates in recent reported quarters, which would reverse that relationship. The underlying category-by-category counts have not been independently confirmed for this article and must be verified against the current USCIS I-140 release before being relied on for a filing decision.

What does the rate not tell you?

An aggregate approval rate is not a probability that applies to an individual petition, and treating it as one misreads what the data measures.

1. It blends every petition filed. Strong, weak, complete and incomplete petitions are counted together. A petition is decided on its own record: whether it establishes the underlying EB-2 classification, whether it satisfies the three Dhanasar prongs by a preponderance of the evidence, and whether USCIS exercises discretion favorably. It is not adjudicated against the average.
2. It reflects who chose to file. Changes in who files can move the aggregate rate without any change in the standard applied to a given case.
3. It does not distinguish between fields or profiles. USCIS does not publish an NIW approval breakdown by field, so nothing in this dataset says how a particular occupation or evidence profile fares.
4. It says nothing about requests for evidence. A petition that drew an RFE and was subsequently approved appears in the data only as an approval.

What a stronger petition looks like under the current standard

The aggregate data cannot show how the decline is distributed across petitions. What the January 2025 policy guidance and the reasoning in published AAO decisions do show is specific, and to a considerable degree it concerns how a case is built rather than who the petitioner is. That is the practical value in this data, with the caveat that non-precedent decisions illustrate reasoning rather than set binding rules.

Seven points follow from the figures, the guidance, and the published decisions.

1. Establish the underlying EB-2 classification first. The waiver analysis is never reached if the petition does not establish that the petitioner is an advanced degree professional or a person of exceptional ability, and claimed exceptional ability must relate to the proposed endeavor.
2. Define an endeavor, not a field. The first Dhanasar prong asks about the proposed endeavor. Establishing that artificial intelligence, clean energy, or public health matters nationally does not establish that a particular endeavor within it does. The endeavor should be clearly defined, with evidence of its potential prospective impact beyond the petitioner’s employer or locality; an endeavor drawn so narrowly that it has no broader implications can make national importance harder, not easier, to establish.
3. Document your own contribution. Assertions that work is significant carry less weight than evidence tied to the individual. Dhanasar permits a range of evidence, including education, skills, a record of success in related efforts, plans and progress, and interest from relevant entities. Where quantifiable measures exist, citation data, adoption of a method by others, patents that others build on, clinical or operational results, or revenue and hiring figures, they are one probative form of evidence, but quantification is not universally required, particularly for prospective endeavors.
4. Make every letter specific, well-founded, and corroborated. A letter that praises the petitioner without engaging the three prongs does little work. Letters that explain the writer’s basis of knowledge, speak directly to national importance, to why this petitioner is well positioned to advance the endeavor, and to why the waiver is justified, and that are consistent with the documentary record carry the most weight. A reasoned letter from an independent source can add weight precisely because it does not depend on a personal connection, but independence alone does not make a letter probative and letters from collaborators are not disregarded.
5. Build the third prong deliberately. The third prong asks whether, on balance, it would benefit the United States to waive both the job offer requirement and, with it, the labor certification requirement. It is a separate question with its own factors under Dhanasar, and it is where a petition explains why the waiver is justified rather than merely permissible.
6. Do not model the petition on an older approval. A petition assembled to match one that succeeded in 2022 is assembled against an adjudication environment that produced a 95.7% approval rate. The framework is the same; the outcomes the data shows are not.
7. Remember the decision is discretionary. Even a petition that satisfies all three prongs requires a favorable exercise of discretion.

None of this is a formula, and none of it converts a record that does not meet the standard into one that does. In the published decisions, a recurring issue is petitions that assert importance rather than document it, and that is the part a petitioner has some control over.

FAQ

• What is the current EB-2 NIW approval rate?

  For the second quarter of fiscal year 2026, January through March 2026, 48.1 percent of the EB-2 NIW petitions USCIS decided were approved. Across the first half of FY2026 the figure was 45.5 percent. These are calculated by USA Immigration Lawyer from USCIS adjudication counts as approvals divided by approvals plus denials; USCIS does not publish a rate.

• How is the approval rate calculated?

  USCIS publishes counts of petitions received, approved, denied, and pending, but does not publish a rate. The rates here divide approvals by the total of approvals plus denials for the period. Approvals are not divided by receipts, because petitions received in a period may not be decided in that period.

• Why do different sources report different EB-2 NIW approval rates?

  Mostly because they use different denominators. Dividing approvals by receipts, by decided cases, or by decided cases within a filing cohort produces materially different figures for the same underlying data. Some published rates also draw on third-party case-tracking platforms rather than USCIS data.

• Have EB-2 NIW approval rates fallen every year?

  Every year-over-year comparison in this series is a decline. Across the completed fiscal years, the rate fell from 95.7 percent in FY2022 to 79.6, then 71.0, then 55.2 percent in FY2025, and the first half of FY2026 stands lower again at 45.5 percent, though that is a partial-year figure. The quarterly series is less uniform: each complete year has ended lower than it began and opened higher than the previous year closed, and the 35.7 percent low in the fourth quarter of FY2025 has been followed by two higher quarters.

• Did USCIS change the legal standard for the national interest waiver?

  The governing framework, the three-prong analysis in Matter of Dhanasar, has not been superseded. On January 15, 2025, USCIS updated its Policy Manual guidance clarifying how it evaluates NIW petitions, including the threshold EB-2 classification, how exceptional ability must relate to the proposed endeavor, and how it considers evidence such as letters of support and business plans. USCIS presents this as clarification, not a new standard; any conclusion that adjudication became stricter is an inference from the outcome data.

• Why did approval rates fall?

  USCIS has not published an explanation, so any answer is inference. Factors visible in the record include a roughly threefold increase in filing volume since FY2022, updated policy guidance on how eligibility and supporting evidence are evaluated, and published appeal decisions that turn on the difference between working in an important field and advancing a specific, nationally important endeavor.

• Does a low approval rate mean my petition will probably be denied?

  No. The published rate blends every petition USCIS decides, including weak and incomplete ones, and it reflects who chose to file rather than how a particular record will be assessed. A petition is decided on its own evidence: the underlying EB-2 classification, the Dhanasar framework, and a discretionary determination.

• How can I strengthen an EB-2 NIW petition given the current approval rates?

  The policy guidance and published decisions point consistently to a few things: establishing the underlying EB-2 classification, describing a clearly defined proposed endeavor with prospective impact rather than a field, documenting outcomes attributable to the petitioner rather than asserting significance, using letters that are specific, well-founded, and corroborated rather than conclusory, and arguing the third Dhanasar prong rather than treating it as a formality. None of these guarantees an outcome, and a well-documented petition can still be denied.

• Is the EB-2 NIW still worth pursuing?

  The category continues to be available and continues to produce approvals, with 5,410 in the first half of FY2026 alone. What the data indicates is that a smaller share of decided petitions is being approved, not that the route has closed.

• Is the EB-1A now easier than the national interest waiver?

  For most of the period covered here the waiver produced the higher approval rate of the two self-petitioned categories when calculated from the USCIS I-140 data. Calculations from the same data indicate the relationship reversed in recent reported quarters, though the category-level counts should be confirmed against the current USCIS release. Whether either category fits a particular record is a separate question from which has the better aggregate figures.

• Does a denial affect future petitions?

  A prior denial does not, by itself, ordinarily prevent filing a later petition in the same or another category. But the earlier record can matter: prior findings, inconsistencies between filings, and any fraud or misrepresentation determinations can affect a later case, and a weakness in the underlying evidence will generally matter again unless it is addressed. How a specific denial affects a specific future filing is a question for an attorney reviewing the record.