For the first time in recent memory, USCIS is denying more self-sponsored employment-based green card petitions than it approves. According to USCIS Immigration and Citizenship Data, both the EB-1A extraordinary ability and EB-2 National Interest Waiver categories crossed below the 50% line in the first quarter of fiscal year 2026 — and the slide has been building for years.
The numbers
EB-1A (Extraordinary Ability):
- FY 2025 full year: 66.9% approved
- FY 2025 Q4: roughly 53%
- FY 2026 Q1: 47.45% — 2,180 approved against 2,414 denied
EB-2 NIW (National Interest Waiver):
- FY 2022: roughly 96%
- FY 2023: roughly 80%
- FY 2024: roughly 71%
- FY 2025 full year: 55.2%
- FY 2025 Q4: 35.7%
- FY 2026 Q1: 42.61% — 2,380 approved against 3,206 denied
Read the NIW column from top to bottom and the shape of the change is hard to miss: a category that approved roughly nineteen out of twenty petitions four years ago now denies more than it approves. EB-1A fell nearly twenty percentage points in a single year.
What changed — and what didn’t
The statute did not change. There is no new rule rewriting the EB-1A criteria or the Dhanasar framework that governs national interest waivers. What changed is adjudication: how officers weigh the same evidence against the same standards. In practice, petitioners and attorneys report heavier scrutiny of citation counts and their context, closer examination of whether judging or membership activities are genuinely selective, more skepticism toward letters from close collaborators, and a higher bar for showing national-level importance rather than merely competent work.
It is worth noting one counter-signal in the data: NIW’s Q1 FY 2026 rate of 42.61% is actually an improvement over the FY 2025 Q4 trough of 35.7%. The trend is not a clean straight line down, and a single quarter is a small sample. But the multi-year direction is unambiguous.
What this means if you are preparing a petition
The practical takeaway is not that these categories have closed. Thousands of petitions were still approved last quarter. It is that the margin for a thin filing has largely disappeared. A petition that would have cleared in FY 2022 on a respectable publication record and a handful of recommendation letters is now landing in a pool where roughly half of comparable filings are refused.
Two implications follow. First, the “file first and see what happens” approach has become expensive — in filing fees, in the months lost to an RFE or denial, and in the priority date you do not secure. Second, evidence quality now matters more than evidence volume: an officer is looking for demonstrated influence on your field that an outside reader can verify, not a thicker binder.
Note that these figures cover I-140 petitions — the first stage. They are separate from the adjustment-of-status stage, where a revised Form I-485 and a new public charge standard both take effect Sept. 18, 2026.
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Source: USCIS Immigration and Citizenship Data (via LinkedIn immigration-attorney analysis)