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Analysis

NIW approvals: how many USCIS actually grants

National interest waiver approvals by year and country of birth, from the agency's own report.

"NIW approval rate" is the most-searched number in the national interest waiver world, and it is not a number USCIS publishes. The agency reports NIW as an approval category inside EB-2 — it counts the petitions it approved under that heading and does not separate out the ones it denied. So there is no rate to report, only a count.

2,207

NIW approvals FY2026

part year

153,283

Approved since FY2014

every year on record

FY2023

Peak year

29,092 approvals

NIW approvals by year

FY2014 4,717 3.1%
FY2015 5,486 3.6%
FY2016 5,917 3.9%
FY2017 6,947 4.5%
FY2018 7,081 4.6%
FY2019 10,134 6.6%
FY2020 11,973 7.8%
FY2021 11,788 7.7%
FY2022 17,356 11.3%
FY2023 29,092 19.0%
FY2024 28,069 18.3%
FY2025 12,516 8.2%
FY2026 2,207 1.4%

National interest waiver approvals, USCIS

By country of birth, FY2026

Country of birth NIW approvals
China 669
India 376
Brazil 43
Vietnam 27
Philippines 9

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Source — USCIS, Form I-140 Receipts and Current Status by Preference and Country. Public domain.

Every figure above is read from the USCIS quarterly data release and rebuilt each time a new one is imported — this piece was last rebuilt 21 minutes ago. Nothing here is legal advice, and ImmigrationAll is not affiliated with USCIS or any government agency.