USCIS Dataset

Daily datasets of USCIS form processing times

About

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) provides estimated case processing times and information request processing times that vary by form and service center. These estimates include both an estimate of the case adjudication time as well as the case inquiry date, which determines when an applicant may contact USCIS regarding a case that is outside of normal processing times.

Unfortunately, these estimates are updated silently without any notification or record, sometimes multiple times per day. This project is an attempt to provide transparency for applicants who may be surprised to find that their case inquiry date was changed without their knowledge.

How it works

The dataset releases are produced on a daily cron schedule that scrapes the USCIS case processing time API and compiles the results into a SQLite database.

The raw JSON results are also collected into a SQLite archive and published as an artifact, in the case of debugging or if there's additional information to extract. These artifacts are not a permanent collection and will be removed eventually based on the artifact retention period.

Changelog

v0.5 - 2025-02-23

• We now collect FOIA processing times.

Schema

forms table

CREATE TABLE forms(
    name TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
    description_en TEXT,
    description_es TEXT
) WITHOUT ROWID

offices table

CREATE TABLE offices(
  "code" TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
  "description" TEXT
) WITHOUT ROWID

foia_processing_time table

CREATE TABLE "foia_processing_time" (
  "id"	INTEGER,
  "metricTimestamp"	TEXT,
  "metricName"	TEXT,
  "metricValue"	INTEGER,
  "trackId"	INTEGER,
  "officeId"	INTEGER,
  "officeCode"	TEXT,
  PRIMARY KEY("id")
) WITHOUT ROWID

processing_time table

CREATE TABLE processing_time(
  "form_name" TEXT,
  "office_code" TEXT,
  "form_note_en" TEXT,
  "form_note_es" TEXT,
  "form_subtype" TEXT,
  "publication_date" TEXT,
  "range_upper" REAL,
  "range_upper_unit" TEXT,
  "range_lower" REAL,
  "range_lower_unit" TEXT,
  "service_request_date" TEXT,
  "subtype_info_en" TEXT,
  "subtype_info_es" TEXT,
  "subtype_note_en" TEXT,
  "subtype_note_es" TEXT,
  PRIMARY KEY("form_name","office_code","form_subtype")
) WITHOUT ROWID

form_types table

CREATE TABLE form_types(
    form_name TEXT,
    form_key TEXT,
    form_type TEXT,
    description_en TEXT,
    description_es TEXT,
    offices JSON,
    PRIMARY KEY("form_name","form_key")
) WITHOUT ROWID

selftest table

Used for SQLite database integrity self-tests

v0.4 - 2025-02-03

• USCIS has begun aggressively blocking scraping requests and significantly limited who can reach their website. Collecting form processing times now requires us to go through a much more time and resource intensive process using residential proxy servers. I've added a link to my funding page if you'd like to support the project.

v0.3 - 2023-07-29

• Release notes are now generated with sqldiff output to compare daily changes

v0.2 - 2022-05-05

• Office data is now grouped by form subtype in the form_types table
• JSON result artifacts are now published in each action run

Schema

forms table

CREATE TABLE forms(
    name TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
    description_en TEXT,
    description_es TEXT
) WITHOUT ROWID

offices table

CREATE TABLE offices(
    code TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
    description TEXT
) WITHOUT ROWID

processing_time table

CREATE TABLE processing_time(
  "form_name" TEXT,
  "office_code" TEXT,
  "form_note_en" TEXT,
  "form_note_es" TEXT,
  "form_subtype" TEXT,
  "publication_date" TEXT,
  "range_upper" REAL,
  "range_upper_unit" TEXT,
  "range_lower" REAL,
  "range_lower_unit" TEXT,
  "service_request_date" TEXT,
  "subtype_info_en" TEXT,
  "subtype_info_es" TEXT,
  "subtype_note_en" TEXT,
  "subtype_note_es" TEXT,
  PRIMARY KEY("form_name","office_code","form_subtype")
) WITHOUT ROWID

form_types table

CREATE TABLE form_types(
    form_name TEXT,
    form_key TEXT,
    form_type TEXT,
    description_en TEXT,
    description_es TEXT,
    offices JSON,
    PRIMARY KEY("form_name","form_key")
) WITHOUT ROWID

selftest table

Used for SQLite database integrity self-tests

v0.1 - 2022-03-21

• Initial release

Schema

forms table

CREATE TABLE forms(
    name TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
    description_en TEXT,
    description_es TEXT,
    offices JSON
) WITHOUT ROWID

offices table

CREATE TABLE offices(
    code TEXT PRIMARY KEY,
    description TEXT
) WITHOUT ROWID

processing_time table

CREATE TABLE processing_time(
  "form_name" TEXT,
  "office_code" TEXT,
  "form_note_en" TEXT,
  "form_note_es" TEXT,
  "form_subtype" TEXT,
  "publication_date" TEXT,
  "range_upper" REAL,
  "range_upper_unit" TEXT,
  "range_lower" REAL,
  "range_lower_unit" TEXT,
  "service_request_date" TEXT,
  "subtype_info_en" TEXT,
  "subtype_info_es" TEXT,
  "subtype_note_en" TEXT,
  "subtype_note_es" TEXT,
  PRIMARY KEY("form_name","office_code","form_subtype")
) WITHOUT ROWID

selftest table

Used for SQLite database integrity self-tests