WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security has announced a sweeping change to how most immigrants obtain green cards, effectively requiring hundreds of thousands of applicants who are living in the United States legally to leave the country and wait abroad while their cases are processed.

The policy, released Friday in an agency memorandum, sharply curtails the long‑standing practice known as “adjustment of status,” under which many immigrants already in the country on temporary visas could apply for permanent residency without leaving the United States. Under the new approach, that option will be limited to narrow, undefined “extraordinary circumstances,” according to administration officials and immigration lawyers who have reviewed the guidance.

In practical terms, the rule shifts the default route to permanent residency to U.S. consulates abroad, compelling the vast majority of green card seekers to depart the country and apply from their home nations, often facing waits of months or even years before they can return as lawful permanent residents.

A Major Break With Decades of Practice

For decades, immigrants who came to the United States on temporary visas — such as students, high‑skilled workers, or certain family visitors — could later apply for green cards through a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office, remain in the country, and in many cases continue working while their applications were pending. That process was widely viewed as more predictable and less disruptive than consular processing abroad.

The new policy upends that structure by treating those inside‑the‑country applications as disfavored exceptions rather than the norm. Immigration officers are instructed to presume that green cards should be processed through U.S. consulates, with internal adjudications reserved for unusual cases that meet a high bar yet to be fully defined.

Legal analysts and advocacy groups say the shift will affect a broad spectrum of immigrants who are in the country lawfully, including foreign professionals sponsored by U.S. employers, spouses and children of U.S. citizens and permanent residents, and others who had relied on being able to complete the process without uprooting their lives.

Many of those individuals now face a wrenching choice: leave their jobs, schools, and families in the United States for an uncertain period abroad, or abandon, at least for now, their pursuit of permanent residency.

‘Self‑Deportation’ Concerns and Family Separation

Critics quickly condemned the rule as a form of “self‑deportation” targeted not at unauthorized immigrants but at would‑be permanent residents who have followed the rules to remain in legal status.

By forcing applicants to depart, the policy is expected to produce extended family separations, particularly for those married to U.S. citizens or permanent residents or raising U.S.‑born children. While the principal applicant waits overseas for a consular interview and final decision, spouses and children may be left behind in the United States for months or longer, immigration lawyers warn.

The risks do not end there. For some applicants, departing the country can trigger bars on re‑entry under existing immigration law, depending on past periods of “unlawful presence,” technical status lapses, or prior immigration violations. Others could find themselves blocked by country‑specific visa restrictions, security checks, or other Trump‑era policies that are more easily applied in a consular setting.

The result, advocates say, is that some immigrants who have built careers and families in the United States could be stranded abroad indefinitely despite having previously been eligible to seek permanent residency from within the country.

Administration Says It Is Closing ‘Loopholes’

Trump Administration officials have defended the change as a necessary step to tighten the nation’s legal immigration system and better enforce the temporary nature of short‑term visas.

They argue that the longstanding adjustment‑of‑status process created a “loophole” that allowed people to enter the United States on temporary visas — which are subject to different standards and less scrutiny than immigrant visas — and then convert those short‑term entries into permanent residency.

By routing most green card applications back to home‑country consulates, officials say they are restoring what they describe as the original logic of the system: those who want to immigrate permanently should apply abroad under the more stringent rules and background checks that apply to immigrant visas.

The administration has also framed the policy as a way to deter visa overstays and reduce the burden on immigration enforcement. If applications are denied while an individual remains abroad, officials note, that person will not be present in the United States without status, eliminating the need for arrests, detention, or deportation proceedings.

Some officials further claim that shifting these cases to the State Department could free up domestic immigration officers to focus on other priorities such as naturalization, humanitarian protections for crime victims and trafficking survivors, and backlog reduction in other categories.

A New Front in the Fight Over Legal Immigration

Outside government, the move is widely seen as part of a broader campaign by President Trump and his advisers to shrink legal immigration, not just crack down on illegal border crossings.

Over the past several years, the administration has imposed travel and visa bans on certain countries, tightened “public charge” rules that make it harder for low‑income applicants to qualify for green cards, and layered new security and document requirements onto visa processing. The new DHS policy fits neatly into that pattern, immigration experts say, by making the green card process more onerous and risky for people who previously navigated it from within the United States.

Business groups warn that the policy will make it harder for U.S. companies to retain foreign talent, particularly in high‑skilled fields where workers often move from temporary visas to permanent residency with employer sponsorship. Universities, too, could feel the impact if international students who might once have transitioned to permanent status decide not to take on the uncertainty and disruption of a forced departure.

Advocates for immigrants say those consequences are not accidental. They argue that the administration is using bureaucratic levers — routing rules, discretionary standards, and procedural hurdles — to achieve reductions in legal immigration that Congress has declined to enact in law.

“The message is that the United States is not a reliable place to build a life, even if you follow every rule,” one immigration attorney said in an interview. “This will deter people from coming and push others to give up on becoming permanent residents.”

Legal and Political Fallout Ahead

The policy is almost certain to face legal challenges from advocacy organizations, states, and possibly businesses that rely on immigrant workers. Opponents are likely to argue that DHS has exceeded its statutory authority, acted arbitrarily by upending long‑settled expectations without adequate justification, and failed to account for the human and economic costs of the change.

The administration, for its part, may argue that the underlying immigration statutes give it broad discretion to decide when and how adjustment of status is available and that nothing in law guarantees applicants the right to complete their cases without leaving the country.

Politically, the move is likely to sharpen the already intense fight over immigration heading into the heart of the 2026 election cycle. Supporters of the president may see the policy as fulfilling promises to tighten the system and ensure that temporary visas are not a back door to permanent residency. Opponents will paint it as another example of an administration willing to engineer family separation and uncertainty in service of lower immigration numbers.

For now, lawyers and their clients are scrambling to understand who, if anyone, can still qualify for adjustment of status inside the United States under the new “extraordinary circumstances” standard, and how to weigh the risks of departing against the risks of staying put.

Many immigrants who once saw a clear, if lengthy, path to a green card are suddenly confronting a much more perilous landscape — one in which the decision to pursue permanent residency may require stepping onto a plane with no guarantee of when, or whether, they will be allowed to come back.