The Most Significant Bureaucratic Sabotage To Date Of Legal Immigration
Treason Bar shysters praised the illegal executive action of DACA, but decry executive action on restricting legal immigration. Shoe, meet other foot.
With a do-nothing Congress, and precious little proposed in the way of legislation for Congress to even decide to make a move on, the Trump Administration has been moving at speed to place bureaucratic hurdles on legal immigration. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that most applications for adjustment of status from a non-immigrant visa category to that of Lawful Permanent Residence (LPR) status, a green card, would be rejected out of hand absent a compelling reason.
Previously, Adjustment of Status (AOS) from a legal status, usually an alien admitted on a Non-Immigrant Visa (NIV) to that of LPR, was done without regard for necessity. Legally AOS was a discretionary act by the government, meaning that it was legal, but not required. This is opposed to the legal fiction that aliens who entered the United States illegally could not adjust their status generally, but had to go through consular processing at an American diplomatic post overseas having jurisdiction over that alien’s country of citizenship to obtain an Immigrant Visa (IV), then return with that IV and usually a waiver for unlawful presence. The legal fiction was that USCIS and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) did not take enforcement action against illegal aliens who applied to adjust status, generally allowing them to remain in the U.S. until an IV was available at the appropriate American diplomatic post. The alien then only had to leave for a few days to attend the IV interview and await the issuing of the IV. Essentially illegal aliens could avoid the prohibition of issuing visas to those here who entered the United States illegally. Those aliens who entered legally, but became illegal were allowed to adjust their status in the United States similarly to those legally present.
However, that has ended, USCIS announced that since adjustment of status was a discretionary act by the government, aliens would have to provide a compelling reason to allow them to adjust in the United States, aside from those with a specific statutory right to adjust in the United States.
The change is likely to affect hundreds of thousands of people. It could also lead to more family separations as spouses or relatives wait for application decisions, immigration lawyers said.
The Trump administration said on Friday that most foreigners seeking green cards will have to return to their home countries to apply, an extraordinary change that could make it more difficult for hundreds of thousands of people to obtain permanent residency.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that oversees the legal immigration system, said it would grant green cards to people inside the country only in “extraordinary circumstances.” People applying for permanent residency will have to go through consular processing outside the country instead, according to a memo issued by the agency.
“This policy allows our immigration system to function as the law intended instead of incentivizing loopholes,” Zach Kahler, a spokesman for the agency, said in a statement. “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.”
The change is likely to lead to more families being separated as spouses or relatives wait for decisions on their applications, immigration lawyers and former homeland security officials said. It could also lead to longer processing times as consulates around the world manage an influx of new cases.
Green Card Seekers Must Leave U.S. to Apply, Trump Administration Says, By Madeleine Ngo and Albert Sun, NYT, May 22, 2026
This is the biggest bureaucratic block on legal immigration perhaps in history. Most aliens who obtain green cards do so through AOS and most of those are fraudulent. It is quite common for aliens who would not qualify for an IV to obtain an NIV, come to the United States and then adjust status here. Aliens intending to study obtain tourist visas, then adjust once here either to a more difficult to obtain NIV, an NIV that leads to a green card, or directly to a green card. Most of the aliens who apply to adjust their status to that of a permanent resident do so from NIVs, mostly tourist visas, lied to the consular officer to obtain the NIV, always intending to adjust status.
