Employment preference · FY2026
I-140 EB-2 National Interest Waiver for China
An EB-2 petition that asks USCIS to waive the job offer and labour certification because the work is in the national interest.
669
Approved in FY2026
NIW approvals born in China
28,030
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 China
Fiscal years, by the year the petition was received.
| Fiscal year | Approved |
|---|---|
| FY2026 (part year) | 669 |
| FY2025 | 3,514 |
| FY2024 | 6,486 |
| FY2023 | 4,825 |
| FY2022 | 2,592 |
| FY2021 | 1,791 |
| FY2020 | 2,557 |
| FY2019 | 1,865 |
| FY2018 | 791 |
| FY2017 | 765 |
| FY2016 | 745 |
| FY2015 | 738 |
| FY2014 | 692 |
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.