1. The dominant queue is still receipt -> interview

Among closed cases with both timestamps known, the median share of total wait spent before interview is 98.96%. That makes the pre-interview stage the main determinant of total time in the observed sample.

The all-case survival/CDF views keep the right-censored tail in frame and therefore provide the least assumption-heavy top-level picture of total processing time.

Total survival all years Total CDF all years

The core structural interpretation is unchanged: most cases spend the overwhelming majority of their lifecycle waiting to reach interview, not waiting after interview.

2. More recent interview periods, including early 2026, appear faster

To avoid anchoring the story to receipt_year, the main temporal comparison now keys receipt -> interview to interview timing. That makes current office activity visible even when the underlying receipts are still from 2025.

Interview year Cases with known receipt -> interview Median receipt -> interview IQR
2025 36 154 days 108-212 days
2026 7 71 days 61-100 days

The 2026 group is still immature: only 1 of the 7 interviewed-in-2026 cases is closed, and 6 remain pending after interview. So the current signal should be read as an early acceleration in the pre-interview stage, not a stable estimate of full end-to-end completion time for 2026-era processing.

Receipt to interview density by interview year Receipt to interview ECDF by interview year

3. After interview, approval is often near-immediate, but the long tail is real

For closed cases with known interview -> I-485:

  • median delay is 1 day (n=29, IQR 1-10)
  • 16/29 (55%) were approved within 1 day
  • 23/29 (79%) were approved within 14 days
  • 25/29 (86%) were approved within 30 days

For interview -> I-130 when known:

  • median delay is 1 day (n=21)
  • 17/21 (81%) were approved within 1 day
  • 21/21 (100%) were approved within 7 days

When both post-interview approval dates are known, 12/21 (57%) were approved on the same day.

Interview survival Interview to I-485 density

The central mass is heavily concentrated at day 0-14, but the observed sample also includes completed waits of 45, 63, and 190 days, plus current pending cases well beyond 30 days. The correct reading is therefore: the interview often ends the main queue, but it does not eliminate tail risk.

For the full artifact inventory, including raw plots and CSV outputs, continue to Results.