January 2025 I-130 Filers

[Miller Family 340]

I filed December 5th at the Nebraska service center.  Hopping in this thread and wishing everyone the best of luck. 

[JustBelieve 8]

On 10/11/2025 at 5:17 PM, S2N said:

They’ve slowed down a bit with the shutdown (they’re still processing, but went from ~4500/day to ~3500/day)

 

January was tracking to have first approvals around the end of December. Now it’d probably see first approvals around end of January/beginning of February as a best guess.

That's just not true... shutdown has nothing to do with I-130 processing. USCIS is a fee funded agency, that already been confirmed. Having said that, as things stand most Jan 2025 PDs will see their approvals in January. They went from 16 months to 13.5 months of waiting, and it keeps going down.

[appleblossom 5,662]

3 hours ago, JustBelieve said:

That's just not true... shutdown has nothing to do with I-130 processing. USCIS is a fee funded agency, that already been confirmed. Having said that, as things stand most Jan 2025 PDs will see their approvals in January. They went from 16 months to 13.5 months of waiting, and it keeps going down.

3.75% of USCIS workers furloughed (https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2025-09/2025_0930_dhs_procedures_related_to_a_lapse_in_appropriations.pdf).

 

So a limited impact but still could affect processing times to a minor extent. 

[S2N 659]

34 minutes ago, appleblossom said:

3.75% of USCIS workers furloughed (https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2025-09/2025_0930_dhs_procedures_related_to_a_lapse_in_appropriations.pdf).

 

So a limited impact but still could affect processing times to a minor extent. 

And sometimes they need something from someone in another government agency that has been furloughed. Fee funded means you can work on your work if you have what you need, not that you can work on things that others who aren’t working need to give you. It’s becoming a big limitation even in agencies that haven’t furloughed anyone at this point.

 

4 hours ago, JustBelieve said:

That's just not true... shutdown has nothing to do with I-130 processing. USCIS is a fee funded agency, that already been confirmed. Having said that, as things stand most Jan 2025 PDs will see their approvals in January. They went from 16 months to 13.5 months of waiting, and it keeps going down.

USCIS received $6.4 billion in FY2024 appropriations according to DHS’ financials (p. 230.) Most of that likely doesn’t fund staff salaries and relates to contractor funding, but all that still has an impact. ISOs are working but if some contractors and support staff aren’t they’ll face limitations.

 

Also the data is public. One of the paid websites is showing a decline in processing speed of 900 cases a day for I-130s in October (I don’t pay and can’t link here because they sell services, but they have a great free page that slices and dices the API data.) The obvious answer is the shutdown has had some impact, but even if that’s not the case the data is clear that October has been slower. Still faster than January and 2024, but slower than the rest of 2025.

Edited October 24, 2025 by S2N

[Miller Family 340]

On 10/20/2025 at 4:43 PM, Miller Family said:

I filed December 5th at the Nebraska service center.  Hopping in this thread and wishing everyone the best of luck. 

We got notification this morning that our I-130 was approved.

[TBoneTX 48,946]

Just now, Miller Family said:

We got notification this morning that our I-130 was approved.

Yee-HAAAAA!   

[S2N 659]

2 hours ago, Miller Family said:

We got notification this morning that our I-130 was approved.

Congrats! Have fun with all the new paperwork that needs to be filled out! Seriously, congratulations though.
 

That also hopefully means those of us who filed early January are 3ish weeks out

[JustBelieve 8]

We will start seeing our approvals after MLK holiday... Let us start the paperworks for NVC

[S2N 659]

As a 1/1/25 filer with a fairly standard case, I’m expecting week of 2/1/26.

 

Though the Christmas holiday falling in the period under review might speed that up (i.e. less cases around that date.) Unfortunately all the free API analysis websites are down and still trying to recover, so hard to see number approved a day vs. number of cases until January.

 

Time will tell, I guess  

[Miller Family 340]

On 1/8/2026 at 3:36 PM, S2N said:

Congrats! Have fun with all the new paperwork that needs to be filled out! Seriously, congratulations though.
 

That also hopefully means those of us who filed early January are 3ish weeks out

I had to renew my Colombian Visa in December, so thankfully, I have most of the documents ready that will be required.  Not quite sure about translations that will be needed.

[S2N 659]

5 minutes ago, Miller Family said:

I had to renew my Colombian Visa in December, so thankfully, I have most of the documents ready that will be required.  Not quite sure about translations that will be needed.

Documents in the language of the country you’re applying from don’t need to be translated once you reach the NVC/Consulate stages (i.e. Spanish for Colombia)