Confusion and Worry After Abrupt Change to Green Card Process

A new federal policy that could require thousands of immigrants to return to their home countries before petitioning for green cards has applicants and immigration lawyers scrambling to understand how the change will affect the path to permanent residence.

On Friday, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that oversees the green card system, said that only in “extraordinary circumstances” would people already in the United States be granted permanent residence. Otherwise, anyone seeking permanent U.S. residence would need to apply at an American consulate in their home country.

Immigration lawyers and advocacy organizations said over the weekend that the change would reduce green card applications. In 2024, 1.4 million green cards were issued, and more than 800,000 of the recipients were already in the United States and had their immigration status modified as part of the process.

The change announced on Friday will be of particular concern to those who are married to U.S. citizens and seeking permanent residence, said Charles Kuck, an immigration lawyer and the former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Such immigrants typically need to resolve their own immigration status before seeking a green card and they have generally been able sort out those issues while remaining in the United States.

“This is simply an attempt to slow immigration,” Mr. Kuck said, “and make immigration so unpleasant that you go home.”

Zach Kahler, a spokesman for the agency, said on Friday that the policy would remove a loophole where immigrants “slip into the shadows and remain in the U.S. illegally after being denied residency.”

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.