USCIS memo requires most green-card applicants to leave the U.S. and apply abroad

On May 21, 2026, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued Policy Memorandum PM-602-0199, "Adjustment of Status and Discretion," published the following day. The memo reframes adjustment of status — the long-standing process under Section 245 of the Immigration and Nationality Act by which eligible immigrants already in the United States obtain lawful permanent residence, or a green card, without leaving the country — as an "extraordinary" form of relief and an act of "administrative grace" rather than a routine pathway. It directs USCIS officers to treat an applicant's decision to pursue adjustment of status in the country, instead of consular processing through a U.S. embassy or consulate abroad, as an "adverse factor" weighing against approval. In practice, the change would require most green-card seekers — including the spouses of U.S. citizens, students, temporary-visa holders, and employer-sponsored immigrants — to leave the United States and apply through a consulate overseas.

The recordable concern is twofold. First, the memo restructures how lawful immigration functions for an estimated half-million adjustment-of-status cases each year, and it does so by internal agency memorandum — without legislation and without the notice-and-comment rulemaking that ordinarily accompanies a change of this scale, leaving Congress, the body that wrote Section 245, out of a substantive rewrite of the statute's everyday operation. Second, the instruction to count an applicant's use of a lawful, statutorily authorized option as a strike against that applicant turns the exercise of a legal right into evidence against the person exercising it. USCIS frames the memo as merely implementing what it says Congress intended — that most applicants process abroad — and Section 245 does grant the executive discretion over adjustment of status. The abuse-of-power question is genuinely contested: a reasonable editor could view this as an aggressive but lawful exercise of statutory discretion. It is recorded here because the penalty attached to lawful conduct and the structural scale of the change give it a credible abuse-of-power character, and because the scope question is one The Standing's editors, not the monitor, should resolve.

The downstream effects are severe. Many immigrants forced to consular-process abroad would, on departure, trigger the three- and ten-year unlawful-presence bars on reentry; combined with the administration's existing travel ban covering 39 countries and its pause on immigrant visas for nationals of 75 countries, large numbers of people — including spouses of U.S. citizens — could be stranded outside the country indefinitely. The memo exempts holders of "dual intent" visas such as the H-1B, as well as refugees and asylees, and USCIS has said applicants who provide an "economic benefit" or serve the "national interest" may still adjust in-country. Former USCIS officials who served under both Republican and Democratic administrations have called the move largely unprecedented, and immigration attorneys have said publicly they intend to challenge it in court.