EB-1A Approval Rate Falls to 32%: USCIS Data Show Eight Straight Quarters of Decline, While EB-1B and EB-1C Barely Move

On September 8, USCIS released Form I-140 (the core petition for an employment-based green card) processing data for the third quarter of fiscal year 2026 (April through June). A number circulating on Chinese-language forums says "the EB-1A approval rate has fallen to 32.3%." We downloaded USCIS's original tables for fiscal years 2024, 2025 and 2026 and recalculated quarter by quarter. The number is real, and it is not a one-quarter fluke: it is the eighth straight quarter of decline.

Bottom line: The quarterly EB-1A approval rate fell from 74.7% in the first quarter of FY2025 to 32.2% in the third quarter of FY2026, with no rebound in eight quarters. EB-1B and EB-1C, which are in the same first preference category, have barely changed, at 93.0% and 97.4% respectively. NIW under EB-2 fell and then stabilized and is now at 55.3%, but its backlog is approaching 100,000 petitions.

How is the approval rate calculated?

Every quarter, USCIS publishes a table listing, by category, the number of petitions received, approved, denied and pending that quarter. The approval rate we use is "approvals in the quarter ÷ (approvals + denials in the quarter)"; withdrawals are not counted. This matches the method USCIS uses on its own website, and the one law firms use when they cite these figures. Keep in mind that the petitions approved and denied in a quarter were not all filed at the same time, so the rate reflects how officers are deciding cases that quarter, not the fate of any particular group of applicants.

All three original tables are linked at the end, so you can recalculate for yourself. Quarter-by-quarter charts and the full numbers for the latest quarter are on the I-140 approval data page in our Data Hub, which we update whenever USCIS releases a new quarterly table.

How far has EB-1A fallen?

By fiscal year: 72.2% for all of FY2024, 66.9% for FY2025, and 40.7% for FY2026 through the third quarter.

Three details say more than the approval rate itself:

• Denials more than doubled. USCIS denied 1,091 petitions in the first quarter of FY2025 and 2,832 in the third quarter of FY2026. It's not that approvals fell while denials held steady; denials genuinely went up.
• Approvals are shrinking. Over the same period they dropped from 3,227 to 1,348. The total number of cases officers decide each quarter is going down, and the share being denied is going up.
• The backlog is growing. Pending petitions rose from 10,586 at the end of FY2024 to 21,157 at the end of FY2025, and to 28,874 now, nearly tripling in two years. Receipts hit a high of 29,582 in FY2025 and fell back to 20,496 in the first three quarters of FY2026, but processing can't keep up, so the line keeps getting longer.

Have EB-1B and EB-1C gotten harder too?

EB-1B has slipped a little, from 99% to 93%, but that's nowhere near the scale of EB-1A. EB-1C has actually edged up slightly. Within the same first preference category, the three paths are moving in completely different directions.

That means the change is not in the first preference category as a whole, but in how EB-1A petitions specifically are being decided. EB-1A is the self-petition path where you prove "extraordinary ability" by meeting three of ten criteria. It leaves the most room to interpret the evidence, and the most room for officer discretion. EB-1B requires an employer to file, and EB-1C requires a record of employment with a multinational company, so the evidence takes a much more fixed form.

Where does NIW stand now?

NIW bottomed out at 35.7% in the fourth quarter of FY2025, then recovered over three quarters to 55.3%, the opposite direction from EB-1A. But pending petitions grew from just over 20,000 two years ago to 96,297, and USCIS decides only about 7,000 a quarter. At that pace, it would take more than three years to clear the line. The approval rate has come back; the wait time hasn't.

For comparison, the employer-sponsored path: EB-2 petitions with PERM (labor certification) had a 97.4% approval rate in the third quarter of FY2026, and EB-3 (third preference, skilled workers) had 96.7%. The I-140 itself has not gotten harder on the employer-sponsored path; the hard part is PERM before it, which we cover in a separate article (linked at the end).

What is the approval rate for Chinese applicants?

USCIS's tables give receipts and approvals by country of birth, but not denials, so there is no way to calculate a separate approval rate for Chinese applicants. Any claim online to have that number is an estimate. What we can say is the scale: in the third quarter of FY2026, China-born applicants filed 1,465 EB-1A petitions, 24% of all EB-1A receipts, second only to India; and 2,119 NIW petitions, 15% of the total. In the same quarter, China-born applicants had 317 EB-1A approvals, 503 EB-1B approvals and 717 NIW approvals. Approvals and receipts are not the same batch of cases, so you can't divide one by the other.

One thing we can say for sure: Chinese applicants are the second-largest source of EB-1A petitions, and when the category as a whole gets harder, Chinese applicants can't escape the effect.

Why has it gotten harder?

What we can say: The change began in the third quarter of FY2025 and has tightened every quarter since. It is a sustained trend, not a jump on the day some particular document took effect. On August 5, USCIS updated Policy Manual guidance on evidence, Requests for Evidence and Notices of Intent to Deny, and on September 14 it issued a policy alert on denaturalization, both pointing in the same direction. But both came after the third quarter of FY2026, so they can't explain the decline in the five quarters before that.

What we can't say: The written adjudication standard, meaning the ten criteria listed in 8 CFR 204.5(h) and the "two-step analysis," has not changed in the past two years. The data tell us decisions have gotten stricter; they can't tell us which specific criterion officers have gotten stricter on. For that you need the contents of denial letters and Requests for Evidence, which your attorney can see and public data cannot.

Which forum claims hold up?

"EB-1A has hit rock bottom." 32.2% is the lowest since FY2024, so the claim holds. But "rock bottom" implies it has bottomed out, and the data show no sign of that: each of the eight quarters was lower than the one before.

"EB-1B and EB-1C are holding steady at 93%." True, and the numbers are accurate.

"There are so many visa numbers this year they're going to waste." That's about visa numbers, which is a separate matter from I-140 approvals. If your I-140 isn't approved, it doesn't matter how many visa numbers there are.

"Chinese applicants are being targeted." The data neither support nor refute this, because USCIS doesn't publish denials by country. Don't treat the overall approval rate as the rate for Chinese applicants.

What you can do now

• If you're preparing an EB-1A petition: prepare your evidence for how cases are being decided in 2026, not based on success stories from two years ago. A petition that would have passed three years ago, when the rate was 73%, now has about a 50% chance of failing.
• If you also qualify for EB-1B or EB-1C: approval rates on those paths haven't changed, and if your employer is willing to file, they are now the safer choice.
• If you're considering NIW: the approval rate is recovering, but plan for a wait of three years or more. The wait time estimator can help you factor in the visa bulletin wait as well.
• To see other categories, or next quarter's numbers: Data Hub I-140 approval data.
• To see how long you'll wait after approval: the backlog page lists, by category and country of birth, how many people have been approved and are still waiting for a visa number. For EB-1 mainland China it is 14,101 people.
• Whichever path you take, there is still the visa bulletin wait after your I-140 is approved. For where EB-1 mainland China stands now and why visa numbers become "unavailable" at the end of the fiscal year, see this article; if you're on the employer-sponsored path, for the PERM step see this article.

Data sources: Form I-140 quarterly reports on USCIS's Immigration and Citizenship Data page: FY2026 Q3 (released September 8, 2026; data queried July 2026), FY2025 Q4, FY2024 Q4. Approval rates are our own calculation using "approved ÷ (approved + denied)." Regulation: 8 CFR 204.5. Forum claims are from a September 18, 2026 post on a Chinese-language immigration forum.