In US Legal Migrants Needs To Return To Their Home Country To Apply For Green Cards.

Washington DC; May 2026: In the United States, the Donald Trump administration yesterday (22nd May 2026) has announced that prospective immigrants would need to return to their home country to apply for green cards, a move that would stifle the most common pathway used for legal immigration.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) portrayed the new policy memo as “returning to the original intent of the law”, while immigration advocates said the change was a cruel and disruptive move targeting those in the country legally. Under the new USCIS policy, those who have already legally lived and worked in the U.S. for years would have to return to their home country to apply to return. Meanwhile, the State Department has halted immigrant visa processing in 75 different countries.

“We’re returning to the original intent of the law to ensure aliens navigate our nation’s immigration system properly. From now on, an alien who is in the U.S. temporarily and wants a Green Card must return to their home country to apply, except in extraordinary circumstances”, USCIS spokesperson Zach Kahler has said in a release. “This policy allows our immigration system to function as the law intended instead of incentivising loopholes. 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”.

Immigrants in the U.S. have been able to apply for an adjustment of status’, a process that allows them to shift between various permissions over their time in the country. A student or someone with work authorization may seek permanent residency, for example, as could someone who marries a U.S. citizen.

David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, described adjustment of status as being used for over half of all legal immigrants in the last generation. “These are all people who qualify to stay here permanently and Congress clearly wanted them to have a way to stay. He’s telling them to leave America”, Bier wrote on the social platform X, directing his message to USCIS Director Joseph Edlow.

“This admin continues to prove itself to be the most anti-legal immigration admin in US history. The harms this will cause to legal immigrants is incalculable. Impossible to explain how stupid and evil this policy is. It’s intended to cost people their jobs and their families”.

HIAS, an immigration and refugee resettlement agency previously known as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, blasted the policy as the latest effort to target immigrants. “The administration’s new policy could force thousands of people to be separated from their families, their jobs, and their homes in order to wait for years outside of the country for their green card”, the group’s President Beth Oppenheim said in a statement.

“It echoes again and again the notion that no one is permanent here, unless they fit a particular notion of what it means to be worthy of protection. And that simply cannot stand. While the policy allows for discretion, it calls adjustment of status as an extraordinary relief.

Beth said there are already 01 million pending claims for adjustment of status. It’s a pool that has only grown since the Trump administration ordered the agency to pause all pending immigration applications around Thanksgiving last year following the fatal shooting of a National Guard member in D.C. — a policy being litigated.

USCIS could also face litigation over its latest move on numerous grounds, including the argument that such a significant policy must be crafted through notice-and-comment rulemaking.

Team Maverick.