The Trump administration said on Friday that most foreigners seeking green cards will have to return to their home countries to apply, an extraordinary change that could make it more difficult for hundreds of thousands of people to obtain permanent residency.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that oversees the legal immigration system, said it would grant green cards to people inside the country only in “extraordinary circumstances.” People applying for permanent residency will have to go through consular processing outside the country instead, according to a memo issued by the agency.
“This policy allows our immigration system to function as the law intended instead of incentivizing loopholes,” Zach Kahler, a spokesman for the agency, said in a statement. “When aliens apply from their home country, it reduces the need to find and remove those who decide to slip into the shadows and remain in the U.S. illegally after being denied residency.”
The change is likely to lead to more families being separated as spouses or relatives wait for decisions on their applications, immigration lawyers and former homeland security officials said. It could also lead to longer processing times as consulates around the world manage an influx of new cases.
“Our consular processing system through which they would have to apply is already overburdened,” said Sarah Pierce, a former policy analyst at Citizenship and Immigration Services who is now the director of social policy at the center-left think tank Third Way. “So that means we could have families separated for months or years.”
About 1.4 million green cards were granted in 2024, with more than 820,000 approved for people inside the country through a process called “adjustment of status,” according to Department of Homeland Security data. Over the past two decades, more than 500,000 people have received green cards via adjustment of status each year, except for in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic.
There are various pathways for foreigners to obtain green cards, which grant them the ability to live and work in the United States as a permanent resident. People with temporary visas can apply to adjust their status if they are the spouse of a U.S. citizen, for instance.
More than 70 percent of people who received a green card through marriage did so through adjustment of status — totaling about 250,000 people in 2024.
The memo was immediately met with confusion by immigration lawyers, who scrambled to understand which exceptions would be granted. Many also expected the policy change to be met with legal challenges.
Madeleine Ngo covers immigration and economic policy for The Times.
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