Employment preference · FY2026

I-140 EB-2 National Interest Waiver for Brazil

An EB-2 petition that asks USCIS to waive the job offer and labour certification because the work is in the national interest.

43

Approved in FY2026

NIW approvals born in Brazil

11,997

Approved since FY2014

every year on record

How long an I-140 takes

USCIS reported a median processing time of 3.4 months for I-140 in FY2026 Q2 — for the form as a whole. The agency does not publish a separate processing time for EB-2 NIW, or for any other preference, so no page on this site claims one.

What it does publish per preference is the volume: how many petitions were filed, approved, denied and left pending, by fiscal year and by country of birth. That is everything below.

USCIS reports NIW as an approval category inside EB-2, so only approvals are published at this level — there is no separate NIW denial or pending count to report.

Year by year for Brazil

Fiscal years, by the year the petition was received.

Fiscal year Approved
FY2026 (part year) 43
FY2025 253
FY2024 1,650
FY2023 3,159
FY2022 2,332
FY2021 1,553
FY2020 1,220
FY2019 926
FY2018 451
FY2017 219
FY2016 83
FY2015 52
FY2014 56

A petition received in one year is often decided in a later one, so approvals and denials in a row do not add up to that row's filings. The most recent year is partial — it runs only to the end of the quarter this release covers.