The new rule by the President of the United States, Donald Trump, which forces green card applicants to return to their countries while they wait for an immigration decision, represents a new blow to legal migration, threatens to separate more families and affects more than half a million people a year, warn specialists consulted by EFE.
The rule, implemented last week, will prevent immigrants who are already on American soil from carrying out their adjustment of immigration status in the United States, so they will have to return to their nations of origin to apply for the so-called resident ‘green card’ at the consulates.
The measure, which breaks with a practice approved by Congress since 1952, “is going to have a very difficult and very negative impact on the lives of truly millions of people,” said Daniel Costa, director of research on immigration law and policy at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
«It is going to complicate the lives of many people because they are going to have to leave their jobs. If they can’t work remotely in another country, they’re going to lose their job, probably. After losing money, they can be separated from their families for at least months and, in many cases, perhaps most, for years,” he said in an interview.
How many affected?
Although there is no precise number of those affected by the measure, the EPI researcher pointed out that more than half of the million people who obtain a green card each year do so through adjustment of status within the United States.
58% of the more than 1.35 million migrants who obtained legal residency in the United States in fiscal year 2024, 782,770 people, did so, according to the latest official figures available from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The greatest impact will be for immigrants with family in the United States, warns the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), since half of the new legal residents are immediate relatives of citizens within the United States.
The policy will also affect immigrants with jobs in the United States, religious workers, beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or ‘parole’ (humanitarian parole) and people who have lived in the country for a long time, explained Benjamin Johnson, executive director of AILA, in a virtual chat with journalists.
In addition, the memorandum issued by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is “very vague,” as it does not clarify all types of immigrants impacted or the exceptions, so it is not possible to know this exactly, said Shev Dalal-Dheini, director of government relations at AILA.
Although the Government has said that this only requires immigrants to return home and apply for a visa, Johnson calls this “dangerous misinformation.”
«This is not about buying a plane ticket and waiting a little longer. For many people, consulting processing is not realistic or safe and, for others, it can mean months or years of separation from spouses who are US citizens, children, employers and communities,” he considered.
A fight against legal immigration
The guidelines reflect that in the Trump Administration they are not “only attacking illegal immigration,” said Costa, who believes that “it is very clear that they want to reduce legal immigration and are taking measures to do so.”
As an example, he cites the brake on asylum on the border with Mexico, the removal of TPS benefits, the pause on refugees except for white immigrants from South Africa and the suspension of the processing of immigrant visas for 75 countries, including Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua and Uruguay.
This will affect the economy, since before Trump’s arrival almost 1 in 5 workers in the United States was an immigrant, cited the EPI expert, who estimates that the country would lose 6 million jobs, 40% of them Americans, if the president meets his goal of carrying out 4 million deportations.
“This is going to have many negative economic impacts for the entire country and, combined with the impacts we are seeing from the Iran war, this is another very problematic thing for the economy,” Costa concluded.
