Hi- build a scraper to automate API calls to the USCIS website. Best of luck
How the case processing time is calculated:
For all cases processed during the last 6 months:
Calculate the time to adjudicate
Line up the cases by processing time
Report the processing time of the case that's 4/5ths of the way down the line
Somewhat unintuitively, the fewer cases USCIS processes, the longer it takes for us to know about it (because it takes new case data to shift the bell curve, and for pre-existing data to age out). That's why the processing time of 11 months doesn't match anecdotal data.
Here's a simplistic example: USCIS processes cases at the 4 month mark at a clip of 1,000 per month, and has done so for the last year. The case processing time reported this month is 4 months.
Now, they've completed stopped processing cases(*, see footnote). A month from now, the cycle time is still ... 4 months (since the 80th percentile hasn't changed).
At this point, they start processing cases again, but only cases that are at the 6 month mark, and only 100 cases per month.
Cycle time for two months from now is still ... 4 months. Here's how that works. The data over the last 6 months:
- 4,000 cases for months 1-4
- 0 cases for month 5
- 100 cases for month 6
Three months from now:
- 3,000 cases for months 1-3
- 0 cases for month 4
- 200 cases for months 5 and 6
The 80th percentile is still the 3200 x 0.8 = 2560th case in order of processing time. Since there are 3,000 cases with 4 month processing times, the 80th percentile is still 4 months.
Five months from now:
- 1,000 cases for month 1
- 0 cases for month 2
- 300 cases for months 3-6
The 80th percentile is 1,300 x 0.8 = 1,040. The 1,040th case has a processing time at the six month mark. So it's only at five months from the slowdown that the metric begins to reflect this new reality. It's a lagging indicator.
* Footnote:
I would venture to guess something akin to what abqguardian (who works 751s at the SRC, apparently) described (see image) happened with 751s, where the case team shifted to work another case. That's why we saw the case processing time move from 4-7 months to 10-12 since summer of 21.
