If you start today, when will you hear back?
US immigration runs in stages — USCIS petitions, the National Visa Center, visa-number queues, consulate interviews. Pick your journey and we'll chain the official published time for every stage onto a calendar, and tell you plainly where no honest number exists.
Interview waits as of 18-JUN-2026 · USCIS medians: FY2026 Q1 (Oct–Dec 2025) · NVC as of 6-Jul-26 · Visa Bulletin: July 2026 · rebuilt daily.
The predictor needs JavaScript — every number it uses is in the tables below.
How this wait has moved — and where it's heading
The chart follows your journey above: interview waits per post, USCIS petition medians, or your visa-queue backlog.
The dashed line is nothing smarter than the recent trend continued in a straight line for six months; the shaded band is how far off that same method was when we replayed it on this series' own past. Queues jump when policy or fiscal years turn over — read it as a direction, not a promise.
Interview waits by post
The State Department's published wait for a nonimmigrant-visa interview appointment, per consulate. This is often the longest stage of a visit or study application.
Reconstructed from archived State-Department publications since late 2022 — Toronto's visitor-interview line is getting longer by ~18 days/month recently.
| Post | B-1/B-2 average wait | B-1/B-2 next appointment | F/M/J next appointment | H/L/O/P/Q next appointment |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Toronto | 21 Month | 21.5 Months | < 0.5 Month | 1 Month |
| Vancouver | 12 Months | 14 Months | 2 Months | 4 Months |
| London | NA | 2 Months | 1 Month | < 0.5 Month |
| Mumbai | 9.5 Months | 10 Months | 1.5 Months | 1.5 Months |
| New Delhi | 7.5 Months | 8.5 Months | 2 Months | 2 Months |
| Chennai | 5.5 Months | NA | NA | NA |
| Hyderabad | 9.5 Months | 9.5 Months | 1.5 Months | 3.5 Months |
| Manila | NA | < 0.5 Month | 1 Month | < 0.5 Month |
| Lagos | NA | < 0.5 Month | < 0.5 Month | < 0.5 Month |
| Abuja | 11.5 Months | 4.5 Months | 4.5 Months | 5 Months |
| Mexico City | NA | 3 Months | 2 Months | 1.5 Months |
| Sao Paulo | NA | 2 Months | < 0.5 Month | < 0.5 Month |
| Dubai | NA | 12.5 Months | 1.5 Months | 1.5 Months |
| Frankfurt | NA | 1.5 Months | 2 Months | 1 Month |
| Tokyo | NA | 2.5 Months | 1.5 Months | 1.5 Months |
| Seoul | NA | < 0.5 Month | < 0.5 Month | < 0.5 Month |
| Bogota | 11 Month | 9 Months | 2.5 Months | < 0.5 Month |
| Ho Chi Minh City | NA | 1 Month | 1 Month | 1 Month |
| Dhaka | 9 Months | < 0.5 Month | 2.5 Months | < 0.5 Month |
| Islamabad | 7 Months | 6.5 Months | 1 Month | 1 Month |
| Guangzhou | 1 Month | 1 Month | 1.5 Months | 2 Months |
| Beijing | NA | 3 Months | 4.5 Months | 1.5 Months |
| Shanghai | NA | 3.5 Months | 3.5 Months | 3 Months |
Selected major posts, as of 18-JUN-2026. "NA" means the post publishes no figure. The predictor above covers all 241 posts.
Petition processing medians
USCIS's own median completion time per form, fiscal-year-to-date (FY2026 Q1 (Oct–Dec 2025)) — half of completed cases took longer.
| Form | What it is | Median time |
|---|---|---|
| I-129F | Fiancé(e) petition | 7.5 months |
| I-130 | Spouse/relative petition — immediate relative | 13.1 months |
| I-130 | Relative petition — family preference (all) | 38 months |
| I-129 | Temporary worker petition (H, L, O…) | 4.5 months |
| I-140 | Employment-based immigrant petition | 4.9 months |
| I-485 | Adjustment of status — family | 5.3 months |
| I-485 | Adjustment of status — employment | 7.5 months |
| I-765 | Work permit (with adjustment of status) | 4.4 months |
| I-539 | Extend/change nonimmigrant status | 3.2 months |
| N-400 | Naturalization | 6.2 months |
USCIS median completion time per form, fiscal-year-to-date — half of completed cases took longer than the median. From the quarterly 'All USCIS Application and Petition Form Types' report; egov's live per-office tool sits behind a bot check, so these refresh manually each quarter.
Visa-number queues can dwarf everything else
EB-2 India is marked Unavailable (U) in the July 2026 Final Action chart — no visas can be issued in that category for the rest of FY2026. New fiscal-year numbers arrive 1 October 2026. Check where your category and country stand in our Visa Bulletin tracker.
How we predict — and what we won't pretend to know
Chained official numbers
Each stage uses the official published figure: USCIS FY-to-date medians, NVC's live case-creation date, DOL's PERM/prevailing-wage queues, the State Department's interview waits and the monthly Visa Bulletin. Different agencies measure differently, so a chained total is a scenario, not a promise.
Unnumbered stages stay unnumbered
After NVC documentarily qualifies a case, immigrant-visa interview scheduling depends on your consulate's capacity and demand — commonly weeks to several months. No official worldwide figure is published, so we do not put a number on this stage. Where a stage has no official figure — consular interview scheduling, your own document gathering — we say so and show the total as "at least".
Queues are not linear
Priority-date cut-offs jump, stall and retrogress. Where your category is backlogged we show the current cut-off and its average movement this fiscal year instead of inventing an arrival date.
- travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-information-resources/global-visa-wait-times.html
- travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrate/nvc-timeframes.html
- www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-and-studies/immigration-and-citizenship-data
- flag.dol.gov/processingtimes
- travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/visa-bulletin.html
Applying for real?
MaybeCitizen tracks your actual application with honest, data-driven timelines — evidence vault, checklists, forms and AI review included.
Open MaybeCitizen →