A policy shift announced on Friday, by US Citizenship and Immigration Services stands to alter the most common pathway to lawful permanent residence in the United States, requiring most foreign nationals already in the country to leave and apply for a green card through a US consulate abroad. Former USCIS officials estimate that roughly one million people apply for green cards in a typical year, and approximately half do so from within the US through adjustment of status. Those applicants, including many married to US citizens, holders of work and student visas, and humanitarian parolees, now face the prospect of departing the country, separating from family and employment, and waiting out a consular process that can run months or years.
USCIS spokesman Zach Kahler said in a public statement:
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. When aliens apply from their home country, it reduces the need to find and remove those who decide to slip into the shadows and remain in the US illegally after being denied residency.
The operative document, USCIS Policy Memorandum PM-602-0199, is narrower than the press release suggests. Dated May 21, 2026 and 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,” it does not foreclose in-country filing on its face. Instead, it directs officers to treat adjustment as a disfavored discretionary remedy and weigh consular processing as the ordinary path. The memo carves out limited categories, including holders of dual-intent visas such as H-1B, refugees, asylees, and certain humanitarian applicants. USCIS did not specify an effective date or address pending applications.
The memo does not amend the underlying statute. Adjustment of status is governed by Section 245 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1255(a), which provides that the status of an eligible noncitizen “may be adjusted by the Attorney General, in his discretion and under such regulations as he may prescribe,” to that of a lawful permanent resident. Adjudication authority now runs through the DHS Secretary and USCIS under the Homeland Security Act of 2002. The statute does not describe adjustment as “extraordinary” relief.
That textual gap is the core of the legal challenge now taking shape. New York immigration lawyer Cyrus D. Mehta has argued that the memo’s framing of adjustment as “extraordinary relief” appears nowhere in the INA and is “in contravention of the law,” noting that Congress used heightened standards such as “clear and convincing evidence” elsewhere in the statute when it intended to reserve a benefit for exceptional cases. Former USCIS official Doug Rand told reporters that “the purpose of this policy is exclusion.”
The US Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo overruled Chevron deference and directs courts to identify the best reading of a statute, though it preserved respect for express congressional delegations of discretion, a wrinkle that cuts in USCIS’s favor on § 1255(a)’s “in his discretion” language. Mehta has also argued that the memo functions as a substantive rule promulgated without notice and comment in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, an argument USCIS is expected to counter by characterizing the memo as an interpretive rule exempt under § 553(b)(A). Litigation is widely anticipated.
