US green-card change pushes applicants into a riskier route home

Foreigners living temporarily in the United States who want green cards will now have to apply from outside the country through the State Department, according to a new US immigration policy announced by USCIS and DHS.

The change affects people seeking to adjust status from inside the US, a process The Guardian reported had been largely unchanged for more than 60 years. DHS framed the move as a return to how the law is meant to work, saying temporary visitors should not use their stay as the first step in the green-card process.

NBC News reported that non-immigrant visa holders, including students, temporary workers and tourists, will have to return to their home countries to apply, except in extraordinary circumstances. A USCIS spokesperson said the policy would reduce the need to find and remove people who remain in the US after being denied residency.

The practical effect is that a paperwork decision can become a family and financial decision. Leaving the US to apply abroad can mean time away from spouses, children, jobs, schools and housing. For applicants from countries where return may trigger re-entry bars or long delays, the stakes can be even higher, though the supplied NPR excerpt only verifies that experts and attorneys warned some people could be barred from coming back.

The scale is large. NBC News cited a former USCIS official saying that in a typical year, 1 million people apply for green cards and about half apply from within the US while living there. The Guardian also cited a Cato Institute analyst saying more than 1 million immigrants in the US are waiting on green cards.

The official frame is compliance: temporary visas are meant to be temporary, and the administration says applying from home prevents loopholes. The critic frame is disruption: aid groups, policy analysts and immigration attorneys told The Guardian the change could make the process harder and more punitive for people already living, working or studying in the US.

That gap matters because immigration rules do not land only at consulates. They move through households, employers, universities, landlords and remittance flows. If an applicant must leave the country, families may lose income, employers may lose workers, and relatives abroad may face interrupted support.

The policy also shifts pressure from USCIS offices inside the US to consular processing abroad. That may look like an administrative change on paper, but for applicants it changes the geography of risk: the decision point moves from where they currently live to the country they may have spent years trying to leave or build beyond.

For readers, the immediate takeaway is simple: a green-card pathway that many applicants pursued while living in the US is becoming harder to use. The wider consequence is that immigration policy is again being used not just to decide who qualifies, but to change the cost, danger and family burden of applying at all.