Foreigners in the U.S. will now have to go back to their home countries to apply for a green card. The Trump administration announced the new policy in a memorandum on May 22, shocking immigrants, lawyers and aid groups, and creating a lot of confusion.
For more than half a century, foreign nationals, including people married to U.S. citizens, students, workers, refugees and asylum-seekers could apply for a green card without leaving the U.S. This meant they could stay in the country with their families while waiting for their permanent residency, which is the final step before becoming a citizen.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said that anyone who is not a U.S. citizen must now leave the country to apply, unless they have “extraordinary circumstances.” It’s up to the USCIS officers to decide who meets those exceptions.
“Nonimmigrants, like students, temporary workers, or people on tourist visas, come to the U.S. for a short time and for a specific purpose,” the agency said in a statement on their website. “Our system is designed for them to leave when their visit is over. Their visit should not function as the first step in the Green Card process.”
Doug Rand, a former USCIS advisor during the Biden administration, criticized the move on LinkedIn. He noted that about 600,000 people already living in the U.S. apply for a green card each year. “The purpose of this policy is exclusion,” Rand wrote. “Remember that Trump has banned people from over 100 countries from returning to the U.S., so forcing them to go abroad for consular processing is no pathway at all. And even for those from favored countries, green card decisions abroad are infamously subject to ‘the doctrine of consular non-reviewability,’ which is a fancy way of saying that if a random consular officer denies your application, even if they’re making a demonstrable mistake, there’s no way to appeal the decision.”
Myal Greene, the president of the humanitarian group World Relief, also spoke out against the change in a press release. “This is the latest step in an effort to systematically dismantle legal immigration and it will have devastating consequences on families,” Greene said.
USCIS claimed the change fixes a “loophole” and goes back to what the law originally intended. However, immigration lawyers and aid groups argue that staying in the U.S. to adjust status has been normal practice for decades. They also pointed out that many people cannot go back home because it is dangerous, or because there is no U.S. embassy in their country to process the paperwork.
“USCIS is trying to upend decades of processing of adjustment of status,” Shev Dalal-Dheini, a director at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told The Associated Press. “This all applies very broadly to anyone seeking a green card.”
She said this will impact a massive group of people, including spouses of U.S. citizens, workers like doctors and professionals, students, religious workers and people with humanitarian protections.
USCIS has not said when the new rule starts, if people have to stay outside the U.S. for the whole process, or what happens to applications that are already waiting for approval.
