The Trump administration announced a new move Friday that will make it harder, if not impossible, for immigrants to the United States to become permanent legal residents. Instead of continuing the sensible and longstanding practice of letting immigrants who are already here on visas apply for their green cards, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that, moving forward, except in extraordinary circumstances, people seeking permanent residency must first return to their home countries and apply at U.S. consular offices there.
USCIS spokesperson Zach Kahler tried to make the new policy sound reasonable and said new rules would “make our system fairer and more efficient.” But that’s not true. This isn’t about fairness or efficiency. The obvious goal is to discourage immigration altogether, and the implementation of this policy would lead to awful consequences.
The purpose of this policy is exclusion.
former uscis official doug rand
According to Department of Homeland Security data, the U.S. issued about 1.4 million green cards in 2024. More than 820,000 of them were issued to applicants already living in the U.S. through what’s called “adjustment of status.” Former USCIS official Doug Rand said in a statement, “The purpose of this policy is exclusion,” and then added: “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.”
The green card process as it exists now is already long, expensive and complicated. For example, my parents first applied for a green card in 1989. We didn’t arrive to the U.S. until 2002. That’s how long it took. And we had every resource available to us, including money.
That’s why Rand is right to say that this new proposal is about exclusion and eliminating a pathway.
Unreliable transportation to hard-to-reach embassies are among the challenges many applicants will face if they return to their home countries. The process, which many applicants tackle on their own while here in the U.S., will most likely have to be navigated with lawyers if they do so abroad.
Completing the application process from inside the U.S. provides access to support networks. Multiple organizations across the U.S. help applicants with the green card process for free. These organizations offer resources and know-how, in addition to emotional guidance for what is a daunting and costly multistep process. Such a level of support would be nearly impossible to find in many applicants’ home countries. This will undoubtedly force applicants and their loved ones to incur debt just to complete the green card application process.
Most alarming is the risk of family separation. This policy change, if carried out, will disrupt lives and destabilize families by uprooting the applicant from their home. Subjecting these individuals to family separation is cruel and unnecessary. For applicants with children, there is the financial burden of maintaining two households, which will further affect the livelihood of these families.








