By Hasan Legal Admin · October 4, 2026
USCIS received 66,276 EB-2 NIW petitions in fiscal year 2025. China, India, Iran, Nigeria, and Bangladesh accounted for well over half of them. Bangladesh alone filed 2,621 petitions with 878 approvals — about 4% of the national total, and a trend tied directly to how little Bangladesh invests in domestic research and how fast its students are enrolling at U.S. universities. Here's what's actually driving these numbers, what the data says about approval odds, and what it means for how you should build your own petition.
USCIS received 66,276 EB-2 NIW petitions in fiscal year 2025. China, India, Iran, Nigeria, and Bangladesh accounted for well over half of them. Bangladesh alone filed 2,621 petitions with 878 approvals — about 4% of the national total, and a trend tied directly to how little Bangladesh invests in domestic research and how fast its students are enrolling at U.S. universities.
Here's what's actually driving these numbers, what the data says about approval odds, and what it means for how you should build your own petition.
Filing volume tells a story about where NIW demand is coming from — but it's easy to misread that story as saying something about individual chances of approval. It doesn't. Here's what the fiscal year 2025 numbers actually show, and what they don't.
| Country | Petitions Filed (FY2025) | Approvals (FY2025) | Share of Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| China | 12,081 | 5,091 | ~18% |
| India | 9,196 | 2,892 | ~14% |
| Iran | 3,871 | 1,681 | ~6% |
| Nigeria | 3,584 | 1,187 | ~5% |
| Bangladesh | 2,621 | 878 | ~4% |
USCIS reported 66,276 total EB-2 NIW petitions for fiscal year 2025 — a 4.3% increase over the prior year. The pending backlog also grew substantially over the same period: 74,392 pending cases by year's end, up 31% from where the backlog started the year.
The overall EB-2 NIW approval rate fell to 55.2% in fiscal year 2025, down from roughly 71% the year before. This decline tracked closer scrutiny of petitions built mainly on citation counts or general field recognition, rather than evidence tied to a specific, well-documented endeavor. This is a national trend, not something specific to any one filing country.
Bangladesh's growth in NIW filings connects to two concrete, measurable trends. First, domestic research investment in Bangladesh runs at roughly 0.30% of GDP — low enough that researchers and advanced-degree holders often have to look abroad to find funded work in their field. Second, Bangladeshi enrollment at U.S. universities has been rising sharply — up nearly 18% in a single year, according to Open Doors international student data. Put together: more Bangladeshi students earning advanced degrees in the U.S., with fewer funded research opportunities to return home to, and a self-petition pathway that doesn't require waiting on an employer to sponsor them.
This explains filing volume from Bangladesh. It says nothing about individual case strength. Every EB-2 NIW petition, regardless of the applicant's country of birth, is evaluated under the same three-prong Matter of Dhanasar standard. National origin explains why so many Bangladeshi applicants are filing — it doesn't lower or raise any individual applicant's bar for approval.
No — as a matter of policy, USCIS officers apply the identical three-prong Dhanasar standard to every EB-2 NIW petition regardless of where the applicant was born. National importance, positioning to advance the endeavor, and the balancing test are evaluated on the specific merits of each case.
Where nationality does matter is strictly after approval, through visa number availability. China and India-chargeable applicants face significant backlogs before a visa number becomes available — the EB-2 China final action date was frozen at September 1, 2021 as of the July 2026 Visa Bulletin — while Bangladesh and most other countries in EB-2 have generally remained current or close to current over the same period. An approved NIW petition still requires an available visa number before adjustment of status, but for Bangladeshi applicants specifically, that visa-number wait tends to be far shorter than what China or India-chargeable applicants face.
Here's the part of this data that's genuinely useful for petition strategy: high filing volume from a given country means USCIS officers have seen the common evidence patterns from that country many times. A petition that reads as interchangeable with hundreds of others from the same country and field is more likely to draw a Request for Evidence — not because of where the applicant is from, but because officers have developed a sharp eye for the template.
This cuts directly against relying on citation counts and general academic standing alone, which has drawn more scrutiny industry-wide as Prong 2 review has tightened. What separates a petition from the common pattern, regardless of country:
Read your draft petition and ask: could this be mistaken for someone else's case in the same field and country? If yes, that's exactly where you need more endeavor-specific evidence — not because your qualifications are weak, but because the petition hasn't yet shown what makes your specific work yours.
If you're part of the growing wave of Bangladeshi EB-2 NIW applicants, the data is clear: generic evidence draws more scrutiny than it used to. We build petitions around your specific endeavor, not a template. We also handle EB-1A and O-1 matters.
This article is provided for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Statistics cited here (petition volumes, approval rates, GDP research-investment figures, enrollment growth data) should be verified against the original USCIS, OECD, and Open Doors sources before publishing or relying on them. Visa Bulletin dates change monthly and should be confirmed against the current bulletin. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes. Consult a licensed immigration attorney about your specific circumstances.