The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced Friday that it will cease granting green card applications except in extraordinary circumstances. In short, DHS grants green cards when a qualified immigrant who is inside the United States applies to adjust their status to legal permanent residence. Now, every legal immigrant must leave the country—that is, self-deport—even if they are qualified for a green card and even if leaving would disqualify them.
The policy is a radical expansion of DHS’s “quiet quitting” on legal immigration that has been going on for months. As I previously detailed, DHS—or, more precisely, its component known as US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS)—has slashed green card approvals in half over the last year. This drop came primarily from not processing applications. Now USCIS’s new memorandum details a plan for mass denials. USCIS has gone from the “quiet-quit” to walking out on 1.2 million green card applicants.
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As the figure below shows, most legal immigrants—56 percent—since 1980 adjusted status inside the United States. In no sense is this a policy reserved for extraordinary situations. The reason it has expanded so greatly over its existence is because more people come to the United States temporarily. More people coming means more opportunities for those people to apply to adjust.
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The USCIS claims that it is contrary to congressional intent to have so many temporary residents applying to adjust to permanent residence. This is wrong. In 1952, Congress created the adjustment of status provision because it was causing so much hardship to Americans and their families to have to leave the United States for the sole purpose of getting a visa to come right back. It was an illogical, complicated, and expensive process with no upside. Since then, Congress has repeatedly attempted to expand the use of the adjustment of status.
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The upshot of USCIS’s bizarre new policy is that the vast majority of the 1.2 million backlogged legal immigrants with pending green card applications for legal permanent residence will have to self-deport. This includes spouses of US citizens and legal permanent residents, as well as their minor children. It includes skilled H‑1B and L‑1 workers who have often waited for over a decade or more for green cards, along with their spouses and minor children.
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