Headline: Trump Administration Required Green Card Applicants to Apply from Abroad

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Headline: Trump Administration Required Green Card Applicants to Apply from Abroad

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During the Trump administration, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a significant policy change, requiring most individuals seeking permanent legal residency, known as green cards, to apply from outside the United United States. This marked a departure from a long-standing practice that allowed many foreigners already in the U.S. on temporary visas—such as students, temporary workers, and tourists—to apply for an “adjustment of status” without leaving the country.

The policy, announced on a Friday by the Trump administration, was detailed in a six-page memo from USCIS. It instructed foreign visitors to pursue permanent status through U.S. State Department consulate offices in their home countries, reserving “extraordinary circumstances” for in-country applications. USCIS spokesperson Zach Kahler stated that the system was designed for nonimmigrants to leave the U.S. once their visits concluded, emphasizing that a temporary visit should not serve as the initial step in the green card process.

Immigration lawyers and advocacy groups criticized the new guidelines, describing them as an escalation of efforts to curtail legal migration and predicting significant impacts on hundreds of thousands of people who apply for green cards annually while residing in the U.S. Critics also raised concerns about potential indefinite family separations, especially for individuals from countries with no U.S. diplomatic relations or those subject to travel bans. The administration, however, framed the

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