The Trump administration quietly ended a 50-year pathway to permanent residence on Friday. USCIS issued Policy Memo PM-602-0199, stripping legal immigrants on temporary visas of the right to apply for a green card from within the United States. Adjustment of status, the mechanism that has kept families together through the legal immigration process since the 1960s, is now classified as "extraordinary relief."
Who Gets Sent Home
The policy applies immediately to foreign nationals on nonimmigrant visas: F-1 student visas, H-1B and other work visas, tourist visas, and others. People married to American citizens, working legally for American companies, or in the middle of pending immigration cases are all affected. From here on, they must leave the United States and complete their green card process at a U.S. consulate in their home country.
USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler offered a rationale that does not match the reality of how the immigration system has worked for half a century. "Nonimmigrants come to the U.S. for a short time and for a specific purpose," Kahler said. "Their system is designed for them to leave when their visit is over, and their visit should not function as the first step in the Green Card process."
The carveout for "extraordinary circumstances" covers people who provide an "economic benefit" or serve the "national interest." In practice, that means the wealthiest applicants with the most high-powered legal representation have a path to stay. Everyone else departs.
The Catch-22 Nobody Named
What the administration did not say in Friday's announcement: on January 14, 2026, the Trump administration suspended immigrant visa processing at consulates in 75 countries. People sent "home" to those countries will find there is no operational consulate to process their application. There is no announced timeline for when processing resumes.
Legal experts and immigration attorneys have identified this outcome in plain terms. If a family is told that the non-citizen member must return to their country of origin, but immigrant visas are not being processed there, the result is indefinite family separation with no legal remedy on offer.
"If families are told that the non-citizen family member must return to his or her country of origin to process their immigrant visa, but immigrant visas are not being processed there, it's a Catch-22 that will effectively create an indefinite separation of families."
The people most exposed are not here illegally. They are students enrolled in American universities, workers on employer-sponsored visas, spouses of U.S. citizens, and asylum seekers who cleared the initial legal screening. The policy change targets them specifically and without warning.
What Happens Next
The Friday rollout came with no congressional debate, no public comment period, and no advance notice to the hundreds of thousands of people currently mid-process. An administrative memo rewrote a 50-year standard practice overnight. Estimates of how many people are affected run into the hundreds of thousands, and many of them have been in the legal immigration queue for years, sometimes decades.
The "extraordinary circumstances" exemption for economic contributors ensures that wealthy applicants and those with corporate legal backing have access to a path that others do not. The policy effectively creates two tiers of legal immigrants: those with resources to navigate exceptions, and everyone else facing departure to countries where their visa applications cannot be processed.
Sources
- U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Will Grant 'Adjustment of Status' Only in Extraordinary Circumstances — USCIS, May 22, 2026
- Trump administration to force foreigners in the U.S. to apply for a green card abroad — NPR, May 23, 2026
- Foreigners in U.S. must apply for green cards abroad, new Trump administration rule says — PBS NewsHour, May 23, 2026
- Non-immigrant visa holders must return to home countries to apply for green cards, Trump administration says — NBC News, May 23, 2026
- Trump administration upends green card process, potentially compelling hundreds of thousands to leave US to apply — CNN, May 22, 2026
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