DHS has backed away from its new status policy change, but confusion remains

On the Friday before Memorial Day, and on the eve of a long weekend, the Trump administration announced that it would continue to block legal immigration. The Department of Homeland Security did not use this language. “This policy allows our immigration system to operate as the law intended rather than incentivizing loopholes,” the agency added. He said on X. “The era of abuse of our nation’s immigration system is over.” A press release from US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that handles legal immigration, provided few details. In the wake of Trump’s rules, it appears that the Department of Homeland Security intended to bury this news by announcing it at a time when hardly anyone would pay attention.

In fact, this change represented a major policy shift, ending the decades-old standard of allowing people to apply for a green card from within the United States, known as “adjustment of status.” A week later, on another Friday afternoon, DHS reinstated the order.

The confusion over changes made by the Department of Homeland Security to adjust status — as well as the policy itself — is emblematic of the Trump administration’s stance on legal immigration. Initially, DHS framed this transformation as a straightforward fix for a broken system. But immigration lawyers said the move would be devastating for legal immigrants, upending the lives of hundreds of thousands of people each year, potentially separating them from their jobs and families for years — or indefinitely. The situation is made more chaotic by a lack of clarity, another hallmark of the Trump administration.

US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced the change on May 21 note. As written, the document implies that most people living in the United States who want to apply for a green card — for example, someone on an H-1B visa seeking permanent residency — will have to leave the country to do so. But there seem to be some deductions. In a statement to CBS NewsUSCIS spokesman Zach Kahler said immigrants whose applications “provide an economic benefit or are in the national interest will likely be able to continue on their current path.” But the memo itself leaves this unclear.

“It’s been somewhat implied that maybe the H-1B won’t apply to them, but we don’t know that for sure,” said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, an immigration reform organization. It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg and other technology executives In 2013. “I think it’s fair to say that’s an open question.”

The scant information about the policy change — which, if implemented as written, would affect more than half a million people annually — contributes to a sense of chaos and uncertainty for potential green card applicants, including those on H-1B visas. Makes up H-1B workers A large portion of the workforce is in technology. During the past fiscal year, technology companies made up seven of the top 10 sponsors of H-1B visas. Amazon led the pack, with 12,391 H-1B approvals in fiscal year 2026 alone.

There are two ways to apply for a green card. The first is through consular processing, which takes place at US consulates in other countries. People who apply this way are issued immigrant visas, which allow them to come to the United States, where they then apply for permanent residency. Because the United States has an annual cap on immigrant visas per country, this can be a long process for applicants from countries that send many immigrants to the United States. For example, a Mexican citizen applies for a family immigrant visa because his brother is a U.S. citizen We can expect to wait 25 yearsWhile a Filipino who applies for the same reason will wait about 19 years. The second way to apply for a green card is through adjustment of status — which, unlike consular processing, does not count toward each country’s immigrant visa quotas. Adjustment of status, codified under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, allows people already living in the United States to apply for permanent residency without leaving the country. More than 600,000 people have applied to adjust their status during fiscal year 2023.

The USCIS memo seeks to eliminate this last path to citizenship as much as possible, reserving it for “exceptional circumstances.” In practical terms, this would mean that hundreds of thousands of people would have to leave the country every year just to apply for permanent residency. Because of the Trump administration Other restrictions on legal immigrationincluding halting visas issued to citizens of 75 countries, could mean that people leaving the country to apply for a green card would be stranded abroad. For illegal immigrants who marry US citizens, leaving the country to apply for permanent residency can actually bar them from returning to the United States for up to a decade, due to… Legal bars on return For people with certain immigration violations.

This is, of course, assuming the policy is actually implemented as written, which DHS now claims it will not be. In a statement issued to New York Times The Department of Homeland Security said last Friday that the change would not apply to all applicants. A police spokesman, who requested to remain anonymous, told the newspaper: “This was simply a reminder to officers of their discretion, which has always existed on a case-by-case basis.” times. A senior White House official told… times That the change was a matter of housekeeping, not a change in policy. But these clarifications come through the media, and not through follow-up memoranda, which adds to the confusion. And before the backlash comes, DHS Republished A Wall Street Journal Writing for the ad stating that “most” green card applicants would have to leave the country, calling the policy “common sense.”

Immigration lawyers have already seen changes on the ground. In a press call on May 28, Jeff Joseph, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the policy was implemented one day before the official announcement. According to Joseph, USCIS adjudicators now ask people who apply for adjustment of status why they applied for adjustment of status instead of consular processing, whether there are any factors that would prevent them from consular processing, whether they still have family ties living in their country of origin, and why they decided not to return to their country when their period of residency expired.

This type of question puts applicants on the defensive, Joseph said. “There is an assumption that you are making a mistake if you overstay (visa) and apply for adjustment of status,” Joseph said. But adjustment of status applicants are often eligible for a “period of residence” that allows them to remain in the country without gaining illegal status — that is, without immediately becoming subject to deportation — while their case is processed. But this change, which Joseph described as “unprecedented”, could make people choose between getting out of legal status or leaving the country entirely.

“The Trump administration has been saying from the beginning that there are targets for arresting undocumented individuals, and the only way to get there is to go after legal immigration,” Joseph said. “They’re not getting the numbers they need if they’re just going after criminals.”

Uncertainty about how the policy will be implemented and who it applies to makes potential applicants uncomfortable — which may be the point.

“It has created a lot of anxiety and worry among individuals, between families, between companies, and among employees, which may be part of the strategy overall,” said Xiao Wang, co-founder and CEO of Boundless Immigration, a company that helps immigrants apply for green cards. Edge.

Wang said the confusion over adjustment of status is indicative of the administration’s chaotic approach to immigration policy. “There is a clear kind of general direction that this administration wants to follow with regard to immigration,” Wang said, as well as the habit of throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. “It’s almost like a startup (minimum viable product) way to test the waters around new policies.”

Wang pointed out a proposition Increase H-1B visa fees by $100,000 As a comparable example. Like the green card change, the H-1B fee increase was announced Friday. “For a few days (after the announcement), every company He frantically tried to get everyone home “We entered the United States before Monday morning, and the government had to issue a number of clarifications over the weekend,” Wang said.

After some backlash, the administration clarified that the H-1B fee increase would only apply to new applications, not to applications already in the United States.

However, critics say the raft of changes in the processing of immigrants — even when they are sent back — is part of a broader effort to keep immigrants out of the country for good.

“There are a lot of people who want to call it what it is, which is incredibly harmful and bad and scary and, at the highest levels, deeply damaging to the United States,” Schulte said. “They are, through bureaucratic doublespeak, trying to get the ball rolling on what they are doing.”