Adjustment of Status Is Changing: Here's What Applicants Should Know

For years, if you lived in the US on a work visa, processing your green card from within the country was just the normal thing to do. USCIS announced they're reversing that. And the way they did it was deliberate, released on a Friday before a holiday weekend.

This administration has a pattern of making big announcements at moments designed to generate maximum anxiety and discourage people from moving forward with their cases. This was no different.

Here's what actually changed.

The regulations provide two options: processing from within the US through Adjustment of Status, or processing abroad through a US consulate in your home country.

Both options have always been available under the regulations. Adjustment of Status is discretionary, but historically, cases have been approved for those who meet the eligibility requirements. What's changed is the signal the government is now sending about how it intends to use that discretion going forward.

So what does this mean for you?

Honestly, we're still monitoring this closely because how the government actually implements this in practice remains to be seen. They may begin denying cases more broadly. We don't know yet.

What we can say is this:

The Adjustment of Status cases that are most likely to continue being approved are those for people who are in the United States on a dual-intent work visa, the H-1B or L-1A. The work visa allows for the dual intention of working temporarily in the U.S. and also applying for permanent resident status in the U.S. for F students or work visas that are not dual-intent, such as E-1/E-2 and O-1, there is still a chance of approval with good evidence. The job is here. Family is here. Kids are in school. Those are real, documentable reasons why processing from within the U.S. makes sense. Those cases should still hold up.

The Adjustment of Status cases that are more concerning are the ones where someone came in on a tourist visa, got married, and decided to file for a green card from inside the U.S. That used to be totally normal. Under this new guidance, I'd strongly advise against it right now.

Same goes for student visa holders who were thinking about filing from within the U.S. The government is essentially saying: if your visa was always meant to be temporary, prove to us why you couldn't just do this process from abroad.

For clients with cases already pending, we're in a wait-and-see mode. I've already started putting together preemptive submissions for some of them to show why their situation qualifies as extraordinary. Whether that's enough, we honestly don't know yet.

That's the hard truth right now. There's a lot of uncertainty, and anyone telling you they have a definitive answer probably doesn't.