U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recently announced that immigrants applying for a green card must do so from outside the U.S. In what many immigration lawyers say is a dramatic break from longstanding case law and a misreading of the statutes governing green cards, USCIS is now requiring immigrants to apply from the consulate in their home countries. In a policy memo, USCIS officials wrote that adjustment of status, the process by which immigrants inside the U.S. upgrade their non-permanent status to permanent, is an extraordinary form of relief not meant to be granted frequently.
The memo reads: “...adjustment of status is an extraordinary matter of discretion and administrative grace not designed to supersede the regular consular processing of immigrant visas.” More context:
Naiara Testai, a partner at Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym, has been an immigration attorney for 10 years. She said applying for green cards from within the U.S. has been the norm for decades. “This (change) is upending decades of statutory interpretation, of case law, of practice,” Testai said. “It’s just another way that this administration is going against legal immigration. They don’t want people to be able to stay in the United States lawfully, and they’re trying every path possible to prevent people from staying here with their families.” The term “green card” refers to the identification card issued by USCIS to immigrants granted lawful permanent resident status. As of Jan. 1, 2024, there were 12.8 million green card holders in the U.S., and millions of immigrants apply for LPR status each year. In fiscal year 2023, USCIS issued nearly 1.2 million green cards. Shannon Shepherd is a partner at Immigration Lawyers, LLP, and has been a practicing immigration lawyer since 2003. She said hundreds of thousands of applicants could now be at risk.
“In 2024, there were about half a million green cards granted, and the number rose in 2025,” Shepherd said. “Everyone is very confused by the policy. They’re very panicked, they’re worried about being subject to deportation even though they were trying to follow the law.” Testai said the memo has created widespread confusion as firms scramble to determine which clients could be affected.
“(It’s difficult for) clients who already had their applications in, who understood the law to be a certain way at the time they applied, and they paid their fees,” Testai said, “The rules are just being changed halfway through. It’s really unfair, and it’s creating a lot of uncertainty.”
