A Tacoma couple's case illustrates the difference between a published office estimate and an individual decision timeline. Abanub Gorgye and his U.S. citizen wife filed for a family-based green card in October 2025, had an initial interview and have awaited a decision since January 2026, according to the reporting cited by KUOW.
Seattle Tops the Nation's Wait List
The Seattle-area USCIS office has the nation's longest published processing time for family-based green card applications, at 36 months, KUOW reported. The estimate is about 32.5 months in San Jose, California, and 21 months in Yakima and Spokane; most other USCIS offices typically take 10 to 25 months. Family-based petitions allow a spouse, parent, child or other relative to seek legal status through a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident family member.
Gorgye and his wife also filed for work authorization in October 2025. Although that process typically takes about three months, he said he had gone a year without authorization to work. In the same KUOW report, he said automated USCIS updates had reminded him he could self-deport. He described the delays as disrupting work, travel and family visits. The report also described another applicant who had waited more than two years for a decision.
What the Published Wait Times Do—and Do Not—Show
USCIS organizes processing-time data by form type and field office or service center, and separately lists a FY2026 Q3 Form I-765 report for employment authorization, broken out by eligibility category and filing type, according to USCIS. The 36-month Seattle figure is therefore an office-level measure, not a timeline for the Tacoma couple or any other individual case. It also should not be taken as the processing-time estimate for a work permit: USCIS reports employment-authorization data separately, and the Seattle green-card figure does not establish how long a particular I-765 application will take.
A 25-Year Veteran Calls the Backlog Unprecedented
Immigration lawyer Karol Brown, who has practiced for 25 years, said she has not seen delays this severe before. She said family, marriage, violence-victim and worker visa petitions have slowed: processes that once took three or four months now take a year, while some that took six to nine months can take years. Brown said the delays create uncertainty for families and employers.
Brown said she had heard that USCIS officer reviews prioritize officers with more denials, and that the process appears to reward denials over the number of cases completed. She also said some approvals must go to Washington, D.C., for final review. USCIS did not answer KUOW's question about whether a new policy was affecting processing times. Brown said immigrants strengthen the region and the nation, while arguing that current policies harm families and the country's global competitiveness.
Nationwide Backlog Numbers Tell a Bigger Story
The Seattle slowdown mirrors a national pattern. According to the Niskanen Center, which tracked immigration application changes from August 2025 to August 2026, USCIS had more than 12.8 million pending cases by the end of fiscal year 2026's third quarter, and its net backlog grew 43% year over year to surpass 7.7 million cases in that same quarter. The agency completed fewer than 1.6 million cases in that quarter, a 41% drop from the year before, even as U.S. employment-based green card applications rose 99% over the previous year nationwide, per the same tracker.
Work authorization delays have grown sharply too: the median processing time for work permits tied to pending green card applications jumped from 2.2 months at the end of fiscal year 2025 to 6.4 months as of August 30, 2026, a 191% increase, the Niskanen Center reported. A separate USA TODAY investigation found USCIS approved 46% fewer immigration petitions in the first quarter of 2026 than a year earlier, the fifth consecutive quarterly decline under the current administration. Family petition approvals fell to just 180,000 in that quarter, the lowest level recorded during the new administration, down from 300,000 the previous July through September. Leo Rossignac-Milon of Track My Visa told the outlet that USCIS's progress on immediate-relative petitions had effectively halted since February 2026.
USCIS Defends Its Approach
USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler said the agency is pursuing what he called a deliberate, data-driven and risk-informed approach that strengthens both efficiency and the integrity of the nation's legal immigration system, without sacrificing quality or screening for speed, the same USA TODAY report noted. That report also found a judge recently struck down the administration's indefinite pause on immigrant visas from 75 countries, after which the administration paused embassy and consulate interviews for immigrant visas worldwide for screening-policy training.
Seattle has historically served as a hub for immigrant workers seeking to obtain and maintain legal status, making the current bottleneck especially consequential locally. Washington's Keep Washington Working Act, passed in 2019, reflects the state's stake in the issue; legislators have said immigrants make up about 15% of the state's population and account for nearly a quarter of its economic output, adding an estimated $145 billion to the state economy.
Immigration enforcement has arrested many green-card hopeful spouses of U.S. citizens during mass deportation efforts across Washington state, according to the reporting, with such arrests tied to loss of household income, increased family instability and damage to community fabric. Attorneys have advised some applicants to avoid airports to reduce the risk of arrest by immigration enforcement, though some applicants have received travel authorizations after repeated requests. Some families have considered leaving Washington state altogether in hopes of a faster green card decision elsewhere.
