What percentage of RFEs are approved?
In FY 2024 USCIS approved 84.9% of the H-1B petitions it completed after issuing a Request for Evidence: 28,349 approvals against 5,044 denials. The rate depends on the visa class and the year, from about 50% for L-1 petitions in FY 2017 to over 90% for H-2A.
H-1B after an RFE, FY 2024
USCIS's FY 2024 report to Congress on H-1B workers counts 33,393 RFEs, 8% of the 407,625 H-1B petitions completed that year. Of the petitions that drew one:
- Initial employment (a first H-1B for the worker): 16,443 approved, 2,540 denied, 86.6% approved.
- Continuing employment (extensions, amendments, changes of employer): 11,906 approved, 2,504 denied, 82.6% approved.
- All H-1B: 28,349 approved, 5,044 denied, 84.9% approved.
Without an RFE, an H-1B petition was almost never denied: 3,186 denials against 371,046 approvals, under 1%.
The rates above are computed from the approval and denial rows of the report's Table 18. Some of that table's printed totals do not equal the sum of its own rows (it prints 39,222 completions with an RFE, where the rows add to 33,393, the figure in the report's text), so the rows are the safer reading.
By visa class, FY 2017 to FY 2022
USCIS published RFE outcomes for the main Form I-129 classes through FY 2022, queried in November 2022. The share of RFE cases that ended approved:
- H-1B: 73.6% (FY 2017), 62.4% (FY 2018), 65.4% (FY 2019), 73.4% (FY 2020), 86.5% (FY 2021), 85.5% (FY 2022).
- L-1: between 49.5% (FY 2017) and 65.4% (FY 2021), and 65.1% in FY 2022.
- O: between 66.1% and 75.4%, the high in FY 2022.
- P: between 60.5% and 69.1%, and 67.3% in FY 2022.
- TN: between 59.9% and 68.6%, and 62.4% in FY 2022.
- R-1: between 79.6% and 83.0%, and 82.4% in FY 2022.
- H-2A: between 84.5% and 94.3%, the low in FY 2022.
The H-1B low in FY 2018 and FY 2019 came with the RFE share of completions at 38% and 40%. By FY 2022 it was 9.6%.
No comparable public figures were found for family-based petitions, Form I-140 or Form I-485, so this page does not give a rate for them.
What the response controls
In the classes with the lowest rates, a third to half of RFE cases ended in denial. Three rules decide the part of the outcome a response controls:
- One deadline, no extension. The response is due by the date on the notice. The regulation caps it at 12 weeks for an RFE and 30 days for a notice of intent to deny, with 3 days added when USCIS mailed the notice, and "additional time to respond ... may not be granted" (8 CFR 103.2(b)(8)(iv), 8 CFR 103.8(b)).
- Everything at once. "All requested materials must be submitted together at one time." Sending only some of it is treated as a request for a decision on the record (8 CFR 103.2(b)(11)).
- No response is a denial. After a missed deadline USCIS may deny the case as abandoned, on the record, or both (8 CFR 103.2(b)(13)(i)).
Casehand reads the RFE, dockets the response date printed on it with the 8 CFR 103.2(b)(8)(iv) date beside it, and flags a difference between the two for an attorney to confirm.