GREEN CARDSHow a Proposed Green Card Application Policy Change Would Disrupt Lives by Assuming Legal Immigrants Are Evading the Law
As with other announcements during the second Trump administration, the real goal of the new policy may be to discourage immigration rather than effecting direct policy changes.
More than half a million people rely every year on the ability to apply from within the United States for a green card, the government-issued ID that allows an immigrant to legally live and work in the country long term.
But in May 2026 the federal government issued a policy memorandum – essentially, a draft change to current policy – that could upend this process and deny immigrants the ability to apply for a green card while in the U.S. Instead, they would have to return to their home country to do it.
To see why this matters, picture a British woman, let’s call her Lucy, who comes to the U.S. on a student visa to earn her Ph.D. at Ohio State University. During her studies, she falls in love with Mike, an American engineer, and they marry. Under long-standing practice, Lucy could apply for her green card right in Ohio without uprooting her life.
The new policy memorandum, however, could force families like hers to make wrenching choices, sending one member of a couple out of the country with no guarantee they would be allowed back in.
As law professors who study the legal procedures relating to citizenship and immigration, we see this shift as a significant departure from how the system has worked for decades.
Congress built what’s called “adjustment of status” – the shift from one immigration status to another – into the immigration legal framework as a pathway to permanent residency. A policy memo cannot cut off that avenue.
Instead, what is being proposed by the Trump administration would require congressional action or agency rule-making that follows the proper procedural steps. The hundreds of thousands of people every year who have been clearing the legal requirements of adjustment of status cannot have their rights cut off arbitrarily.
Separation, Disruption
Approximately 54%, or 608,260, of the 1.17 million new lawful permanent residents in fiscal year 2023 received a green card from within the United States.
But now, the draft policy emphasizes that those who entered the United States as nonimmigrants – such as people on student visas, who stated that they would be leaving the country once their education was finished – “are generally expected to pursue an immigrant visa and admission from outside the United States if they wish to reside permanently in this country.”
