The federal agency USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) has released the official data for cases approved, denied, and pending for the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2025. In this article we break down the approval rates for the green card categories EB2 NIW (National Interest Waiver) and EB1A (Extraordinary Abilities).
Fiscal Year vs Calendar Year
Before getting into the data, it is worth explaining that USCIS’ fiscal years do not equate calendar years. The fiscal year starts in October and finishes on the last day of September the following year. Therefore, the first quarter of the fiscal year comprises the months of October, November and December.
Data for Quarter 1 FY2025
We calculate overall success rates for the two green card categories using the spreadsheet published by USCIS. To get approval rates, we divided the number of I-140 cases approved during the quarter by the sum of approvals and denials in the same quarter, and we multiplied the resulting number by 100 to get a percentage.
Approval rates
The approval rates in the EB-2 NIW have continually decreased since reaching figures close to 100% in Fiscal Year 2022. Since then, the success rate of EB2-NIW has decreased to the current 62.8% calculated for the first quarter of fiscal year 2025. The average approval rate for NIW since FY2022 is 81%, so we are significantly below the mean. This low approval rate could be due to the increasing popularity of this category, which may have drawn a significant number of underqualified applicants attracted by the seemingly “easy” approval process. This, together with potentially poorly prepared petitions, could have contributed to this overall historically low approval rate.
In EB-1A the behavior of the approval rate is quite different. The historical mean since Fiscal Year 2022 is 74%, and the quarterly result has been fluctuating around that average. In fact, in this first quarter of Fiscal Year 2025, the approval rate was calculated to be 74.9%, right on top of the mean.
Graph: Percentage approval rates for the EB-2 NIW and EB-1A categories over the past 3 years
Demand for the two green card categories
The data that USCIS releases each quarter allows us to gauge the demand for each of the green card categories.
In fiscal year 2023 we saw a sudden increase in popularity for EB-2 NIW, jumping from less than 4,000 I-140 filed each quarter to over 9,000 each quarter. This demand started to decrease in 2024. Now, in the first quarter of fiscal year 2025 the number of I-140s approved plus denied has fallen to the lowest level in two years, to approximately 7,500.
This decrease in demand could impact the wait time based on the visa bulletin in the months and years to come. If demand is reduced, the visa bulletin is likely to move a bit faster. Remember that the visa bulletin is just the representation of the annual green card quotas imposed by the US Congress: if less applicants are approved, less people are waiting in line to finish their process, so date in the visa bulletin may move quicker compared to a situation when more I-140s have been approved.
In the EB-1A category the demand had also steadily increased and has not come down recently, sitting near all-time highs of almost 4,400 cases approved and denied in this first quarter of 2025.
Graph: Sum of I-140 cases approved and denied each quarter for EB2 NIW and EB1A
Top 10 countries by number of I-140 cases approved
In the EB1A category, China and India continue to dominate all other countries, with 19.3% and 17.2% of the total approved I-140s this quarter, respectively. It is worth mentioning that the combined share of approvals for these two nations has fallen down significantly due to the whopping 10-point drop experimented by China. Nigeria, Brazil, and Russia take the 3rd, 4th, and 5th positions, respectively, as they did in the previous quarter. South Korea moves up three positions from 9 to 6, and the United Kingdom goes up from number 8 to 7. Ukraine enters the chart in 10th position.
Table 1: Top 10 countries by number of EB-1A I-140 approved
| Position | Country | # Approvals in EB-1A |
% of total |
| 1 | CHINA | 912 | 19.3 % |
| 2 | INDIA | 813 | 17.2 % |
| 3 | NIGERIA | 226 | 4.8 % |
| 4 | BRAZIL | 126 | 2.7 % |
| 5 | RUSSIA | 101 | 2.1 % |
| 6 | SOUTH KOREA | 66 | 1.4 % |
| 7 | UNITED KINGDOM | 65 | 1.4 % |
| 8 | IRAN | 65 | 1.4 % |
| 9 | CANADA | 64 | 1.3 % |
| 10 | UKRAINE | 61 | 0.9 % |
In the EB-2 NIW category, China and India also dominate the top 10 with almost the same share of approvals compared to the previous period. China surpassed the one thousand I-140 cases approved in the quarter, and take almost 25% of the approvals. Iran and Nigeria swap positions, and they get 33 and 68 less I-140s approved compared to the most recent quarter, respectively. Brazil is still number 5 but with 70 less cases approved compared to the last trimester of 2024. Korea (#7) and Bangladesh (#6) swap positions with 47 and 23 less cases than in the previous quarter, respectively.
Table 2: Top 10 countries by number of EB-2 NIW I-140 approved
| Position | Country | # Approvals in EB-2 NIW |
% of total |
| 1 | CHINA | 1173 | 24.8 % |
| 2 | INDIA | 713 | 15.1 % |
| 3 | IRAN | 364 | 7.7 % |
| 4 | NIGERIA | 340 | 7.2 % |
| 5 | BRAZIL | 240 | 5.1 % |
| 6 | BANGLADESH | 201 | 4.3 % |
| 7 | SOUTH KOREA | 184 | 3.9 % |
| 8 | PAKISTAN | 145 | 3.1 % |
| 9 | COLOMBIA | 111 | 2.4 % |
| 10 | TAIWAN | 82 | 1.7 % |
What these numbers mean for you
Remember that these are official statistics from USCIS and do not represent your actual chances of approval. Each case is unique and your probability of success does not depend on your country of birth or other type of group characteristics. There are a few factors that can impact your own odds of success:
- Your profile of qualifications.
- Your proposed endeavor (for EB-2 NIW): what your professional mission for the US is and what broader impacts it may have to benefit the country.
- The quality of your petition package. Your profile and endeavor are important but if you can’t present your arguments effectively, it is unlikely that the USCIS officer will grant the approval you want. That’s why we created this website and our online courses: to help you navigate this process in the easiest way possible!
- The officer who reviews and adjudicates your case: this is an external factor, beyond our control. But it is well known that there are more strict officers that could make your life a little bit more complicated.
