USCIS Green Card Policy Shift:

What the New Memo Means for Millions of Immigrants

Policy Memorandum PM-602-0199  |  Issued: May 21, 2026

1. The Policy That Shook the Immigration World

On May 21, 2026, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued Policy Memorandum PM-602-0199, titled: “Adjustment of Status is a Matter of Discretion and Administrative Grace, and an Extraordinary Relief that Permits Applicants to Dispense with the Ordinary Consular Visa Process.”

 

The following day, USCIS Spokesman Zach Kahler declared:

“We’re returning to the original intent of the law to ensure aliens navigate our nation’s immigration system properly. From now on, an alien who is in the U.S. temporarily and wants a Green Card must return to their home country to apply, except in extraordinary circumstances.”

For the more than one million people with pending green card applications inside the United States, that statement landed like a bombshell — effectively upending over 50 years of immigration practice overnight.

 

2. What Is Adjustment of Status — And Why Does It Matter?

Adjustment of Status (AOS) is the process by which non-citizens can apply to obtain Lawful Permanent Resident status — commonly referred to as a “Green Card” — without leaving the United States. For decades, it has been the default, preferred path for immigrants already living legally in the country, allowing them to remain with their families, keep their jobs, and avoid the risks and delays of traveling abroad.

 

USCIS has now issued a policy memo directing that foreign nationals seeking to adjust their immigration status to permanent residence must generally do so through consular processing via the Department of State outside the United States. The new guidance holds that adjustment of status is to be reserved for “extraordinary circumstances” — framed as a discretionary grant of administrative grace by the U.S. government.

 

Figure 1: Comparison of the old in-country process versus the new consular processing requirement.

 

3. Who Is Affected?

The policy primarily targets non-immigrant, non-dual-intent visa holders. The following visa categories are directly in scope:

 

• F-1 Students — attending colleges, universities, or language schools
• B-1/B-2 Tourists and Business Visitors
• H-1B Specialty Occupation Workers (temporary work visas)
• O-1 Visa holders (individuals of extraordinary ability)
• L-1 Intracompany Transferees
• All other non-immigrant, non-dual-intent visa categories

 

Figure 2: Estimated percentage of visa holders significantly impacted by the new discretionary policy.

 

USCIS argued that these visas were designed for short-term stays and specific purposes — not as a stepping stone to permanent residency. “Their visit should not function as the first step in the Green Card process,” the agency stated.

 

4. Communities Most Severely Impacted

While this policy affects all non-immigrant visa holders broadly, three communities face a uniquely compounded crisis: Pakistani nationals, Indian nationals, and Middle Eastern immigrants. For Pakistani-American residents in particular, the policy compounds restrictions that were already stacking up against them.

 

Figure 3: Communities facing the greatest compounded hardship under PM-602-0199.

 

4a. Pakistani Nationals and Pakistani-American Residents

Pakistani nationals form one of the most severely exposed groups under this new policy — and they were already navigating a series of earlier restrictions before this memo was issued.

 

The United States is home to over 500,000 people of Pakistani origin, with thousands currently on temporary visas — F-1 student visas, H-1B work visas, and B-1/B-2 tourist visas — who are actively pursuing permanent residency through employment sponsorship or family petitions.

 

The layers of risk for Pakistani applicants are especially severe:

 

• January 2026 Immigrant Visa Suspension: The State Department paused all immigrant visa issuance for 75 countries including Pakistan in January 2026. This means that if Pakistani applicants are now forced to pursue consular processing abroad, there may be no active consular pathway available to them at all.
• Travel Ban Overlap: Pakistan is among the countries affected by the Trump administration’s expanded travel restrictions. Individuals forced to leave the U.S. to apply at a consulate may find themselves locked out of returning indefinitely.
• Re-Entry Bars: Pakistani visa holders who have overstayed — even by a single day — risk triggering 3-year or 10-year bars on re-entering the United States the moment they depart.
• Employment-Based Backlog: For Pakistani nationals in the employment-based queue, wait times already stretch several years due to per-country caps. The new policy adds yet another layer of complexity and delay on top of an already strained system.

 

For Pakistani residents who have built lives, careers, and families in the United States over many years — sometimes decades — this policy represents a potential forced uprooting. Many face the agonizing choice of abandoning their green card applications entirely or leaving the country and risking never being permitted to return.

 

4b. Indian Nationals — The World’s Longest Immigration Queue

Indian immigrants in the United States are already enduring what is widely recognized as the most extreme immigration backlog in the world. The new USCIS policy threatens to make their situation dramatically worse.

 

Over 1.2 million Indian nationals are currently waiting in the employment-based green card queue. Under the U.S. immigration system’s 7% per-country cap, India receives approximately 9,800 employment-based green cards per year — the same allocation as Liechtenstein, a nation of 39,000 people. With over 800,000 to 1,000,000+ pending employment-based cases for Indian nationals, the theoretical wait time to clear the backlog is between 80 and 100 years. In practice, due to spillover from other categories, current wait times are approximately 12 years for EB-2 and 13 years for EB-3.

 

As of May 2026, the Visa Bulletin shows that Indian applicants in the EB-1 and EB-2 categories actually saw their priority dates move backward — meaning longer waits, not shorter ones. Indian applicants who have been in the employment-based queue for a decade or more now face the additional burden of heightened discretionary scrutiny under the new policy, even though they have done everything legally required of them.

 

The practical consequences are severe:

 

• Indian H-1B workers who entered the U.S. on single-intent visas and later received employer-sponsored green card petitions are now in a gray zone — the new memo treats their intent to stay as an adverse discretionary factor, even though Congress never prohibited it.
• Indian professionals who have been in the U.S. for 10, 15, or even 20 years on H-1B extensions, waiting for their priority dates to become current, face new uncertainty about whether their in-country adjustment applications will be approved.
• The “golden handcuffs” problem — being tied to a single employer because of a pending green card — is now compounded by the fear that the entire application could be denied on discretionary grounds.
• Many Indian professionals are now actively exploring emigration to Canada, Germany, Australia, and the UAE, where pathways to permanent residency are faster and less bureaucratically hostile.

 

4c. Middle Eastern Nationals — Travel Bans Compound the Crisis

For nationals from Middle Eastern countries, the new USCIS policy intersects dangerously with a web of existing travel bans and visa suspensions, creating what immigration attorneys describe as a “perfect trap.”

 

The Trump administration’s expanded travel restrictions, issued via a White House proclamation in December 2025, affect nationals of 39 countries — with heavy overlap among Middle Eastern nations. Countries including Iran, Yemen, Libya, and Syria are on lists that either fully suspend visa issuance or subject nationals to intensive additional vetting that can take years.

 

Under the new USCIS policy, if a Yemeni, Iranian, Libyan, or Syrian national with a pending Form I-485 is told they must pursue consular processing abroad:

 

• There may be no functioning U.S. consulate in their home country at all.
• The moment they leave the United States, their pending I-485 could be deemed abandoned.
• Travel bans may prevent them from re-entering the United States indefinitely.
• Consular offices in third countries are already overwhelmed with backlogs and may not process their cases for years.

 

The Controlled Application Review and Resolution Program (CARRP) — a longstanding USCIS policy that applies heightened scrutiny to applicants from Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian communities — further compounds the risks. The top five countries most impacted by CARRP have historically been Pakistan, Iraq, India, Iran, and Yemen. Under the new discretionary framework, applicants from these communities face a double layer of scrutiny: once under CARRP and again under the new “extraordinary circumstances” standard.

 

5. The Gap Between the Memo and the Headlines

Here is where critical nuance is essential — and where public alarm has, in some respects, outpaced the legal reality.

 

The press release accompanying the policy memo contained a statement by Spokesman Zach Kahler that was, by the assessment of many immigration attorneys, misleading. The memo itself does not require all green card applicants to file immigrant visa applications abroad, and Adjustment of Status remains available as a legal path to permanent residency authorized by Congress.

 

PM-602-0199 does not create new eligibility requirements or prohibit adjustment of status filings. Rather, it reiterates longstanding legal principles that USCIS officers retain broad discretion in adjudicating adjustment applications — and may deny cases even where the applicant otherwise meets technical eligibility requirements.

 

Key legal reality: The underlying law — 8 U.S.C. § 1255 — was not changed. Adjustment of Status still exists. What changed is how USCIS is instructing officers to use their discretion.

 

6. The “Extraordinary Circumstances” Problem

The most troubling aspect of PM-602-0199 is what it deliberately leaves undefined. The policy memo does not provide a definition, checklist, or examples of what constitutes “extraordinary circumstances.” Instead, the memo frames adjustment of status itself as the “extraordinary” relief, and directs officers to apply a broad, totality-of-the-circumstances discretionary analysis on a case-by-case basis.

 

This vagueness hands enormous power to individual USCIS officers — and creates deep uncertainty for applicants who have been planning, paying fees, and preparing their cases for months or years. Even applicants who satisfy every statutory eligibility requirement are not guaranteed approval under this new standard.

 

7. Immediate Dangers for Those Who Leave

For many people with pending applications, the instinct might be to leave the United States and begin consular processing abroad. Immigration attorneys across the country are issuing urgent warnings that this could be catastrophic:

 

Re-Entry Bars

Individuals who have overstayed their visas could trigger a 3-year or 10-year bar on re-entering the United States the moment they leave — effectively trapping them abroad.

Travel and Country Bans

Applicants from countries subject to active travel suspensions or immigrant visa pauses — including Pakistan, Iran, Yemen, and dozens of others — could find themselves permanently locked out.

Consular Backlogs

Consular offices already face enormous wait times. A sudden influx of diverted applicants is expected to trap families and workers abroad for years.

Application Abandonment

Leaving the U.S. without attorney review could result in automatic abandonment of a pending Form I-485, voiding years of preparation and thousands of dollars in fees.

 

8. Legal Challenges on the Horizon

Because PM-602-0199 was issued via a policy memorandum rather than legislation passed by Congress, immigration attorneys and advocacy groups are already preparing significant legal challenges.

 

The USCIS Office of the Director issued the memo without an individual signature — an unusual step that has drawn attention. Critics argue the memo misreads the law by treating as “administrative grace” a process that Congress expressly codified as a statutory right under INA Section 245.

 

The sharpest legal tension: the memo treats remaining in the U.S. and adjusting status as an adverse factor. Yet for immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, Congress expressly exempted this exact conduct from the statutory bars that constrain other applicants. Attorneys argue USCIS is penalizing at the discretionary stage conduct Congress explicitly chose not to prohibit. Legal challenges are expected to be filed promptly, with courts potentially issuing injunctions to pause the policy while litigation proceeds.

9. What Applicants Should Do Right Now

The most urgent, unified advice from immigration attorneys nationwide is clear:

 

DO NOT leave the United States without first consulting an experienced immigration attorney.

 

Additional guidance:

 

• If you have a pending Form I-485, do not withdraw it without attorney review.
• Do not stop working on your application or miss any USCIS deadlines based on this news alone.
• Build your discretionary record into the initial submission — address any negative factors directly with evidence.
• Pakistani applicants should urgently consult attorneys about the January 2026 immigrant visa suspension and how it intersects with this new policy before taking any action.
• Indian applicants with long-pending priority dates should get their cases reviewed for strength under the new discretionary framework.
• Applicants from Middle Eastern countries on the travel ban list should not leave the United States under any circumstances without full legal review.
• Monitor court developments closely — an injunction could pause the policy while litigation proceeds.

Conclusion

This is one of the most significant shifts in U.S. immigration administration in decades — not because the law changed, but because of how dramatically the government’s stance toward enforcing it has changed. The memo did not close the door on adjusting status inside the United States, but it made that door far narrower, far less predictable, and far more dependent on officer discretion.

 

For Pakistani Americans, Indian Americans, Middle Eastern immigrants, and the hundreds of thousands of others caught in this new reality, the human stakes are enormous. These are people who followed the rules, hired attorneys, paid fees, and built lives in the United States — often over many years. They now face uncertainty about whether those lives can continue.

 

The courts will likely have the final word — but until they do, millions of people are left navigating deep uncertainty about their futures in the United States.

 

Sources: USCIS.gov | PBS NewsHour | NBC News | BBC | NPR | CATO Institute | Washington Post | Times of Islam | Newsweek | Boundless | Ellis | Murray Osorio | Murthy Law Firm | Erickson Immigration Group | Semafor | Time Magazine

Document prepared: May 25, 2026