Legal Immigration in Numbers: August 2026 Status Update

While President Trump has kept the spotlight on illegal immigration, legal immigration has also been disrupted—through policy changes and bureaucratic slowdowns. At the same time, delayed data releases have obscured how federal agencies are currently operating, limiting public insight. Below, I analyze the most recent data available, current as of August 31, 2026.

Contents

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

• Subset of processing data for July 2026
• All forms processing data for January through March 2026
• Median processing times through May 31, 2026

Department of State

• Consular wait times as of August 17, 2026
• IV and NIV monthly visa issuances for February 2026

Department of Labor

• PERM Processing Times as of August 27, 2026

Immigration and Customs Enforcement

• International student records through August 2026

National Travel and Tourism Office

• Trends in overseas visitors through July 2026

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) oversees the administration of legal immigration by adjudicating applications and petitions for benefits such as work authorization, citizenship, and legal permanent residence (green card status).

Comprehensive processing data for all USCIS forms is only available through March, but a smaller dataset provides updated details through July.

Key takeaways from the April 2026 USCIS processing data:

• In July 2026, USCIS received 48 percent fewer forms among the reported form types. Despite the decreased workload, USCIS completed 53 percent fewer cases among these types.
• Most strikingly, USCIS completed just 20,674 naturalization cases in July 2026, down from 80,077 a year prior. From January 2026 to July 2026, USCIS completed an average of just 27,077 naturalization cases per month. By comparison, from January to July of 2025, USCIS completed an average of 86,044 naturalization cases per month.
• Between July 2025 and July 2026, the share of naturalization completions that were denied doubled from 10 percent in July 2025 to more than 20 percent in July 2026.
• The number of naturalization applications that have been pending for over six months increased by 338 percent between July 2025 and July 2026.
• The average processing time for an application for employment authorization rose by 132 percent between July 2025 and July 2026.
• Notably, the month prior in June 2026, 40 percent of completed refugee green card applications were denied. By comparison, in June 2025, only 14 percent were. July 2026 reported 20 percent of its refugee green card completions as denials, compared to just 6 percent in July 2025.