Green card application process now forces immigrants to return home | The Excerpt – USA Today

On the Wednesday, May 27, 2026, episode of The Excerpt podcast: A green card policy change announced last Friday could force many non-citizens to return to their host countries before applying, upending the lives of hundreds of thousands. Adriel Orozco, senior policy counsel at American Immigration Council, joins The Excerpt to share his insights.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Dana Taylor:
A significant change to the green card application process announced last week could upend the lives of hundreds of thousands of people living in America. The change released by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which oversees the program, require non-citizens to apply for a green card through their host countries. What might this change mean for applicants and their families who are already in the US studying, working, and living with their families? And what’s behind the change?
Hello and welcome to USA TODAY’s The Excerpt. I’m Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, May 27th, 2026. Here to help me dig into this change and how it will impact immigrants across the country is Adriel Orozco, senior policy counsel at American Immigration Council. Thank you so much for joining me today, Adriel.
Adriel Orozco:
Yeah, thank you for having me.
Dana Taylor:
I want to start out by getting a little context for this issue. How big is the Green Card program and who are the people filing these applications? Can you break that down for me please?
Adriel Orozco:
Yeah, so every year we have about one million individuals who become green card holders or legal permanent residents in the United States. And generally about half of those individuals come from outside of the United States and the other half are able to get green cards within the United States through what’s called adjustment of status. And so this memo in particular would apply to the individuals who there’s a statute, there’s a law that allows them to apply for a green card, but they’re already in the United States. And so they have to go through that process here instead of having to go abroad.
So we go as far back as 1952 through the Immigration Nationality Act, that’s when Congress created section INA 245A, which allows people who have been admitted, inspected and paroled into the United States to be able to go through that process here. And since then, Congress has amended that statute around 20 times to allow various individuals within the United States to be able to pursue their green cards here. So it’s been quite some time that Congress has initially passed and then reaffirmed the process that allows people to do that within the country.
Dana Taylor:
Adriel, what about people who are from countries that are currently on the block list by this administration?
Adriel Orozco:
Essentially, what’s happening here is that there are other restrictions that the government has imposed. For individuals who are abroad, the Department of State has implemented a current pause on visa processing or final adjudication of those cases for people from 75 countries. In addition to that, USCIS has currently within the United States an administrative pause on processing and ultimate adjudication for individuals from 39 countries. And then there’s, of course, the travel restrictions as well for those 39 countries who are abroad. And so this is sort of just piling onto that.
So essentially what it’s saying, we’re going to force individuals to have to leave the United States to go through consular processing. Construct processing generally officers have greater discretion to deny and now we have these restrictions as well. So essentially people who have been eligible to apply and potentially obtain a green card within the United States would have to leave the United States and then they’re left without options that these applications may not be processed because they’re currently paused through either the Department of State travel restrictions or their public charge restrictions, which is much broader to 75 countries.
And so it’s really putting people in a very difficult position where they might not know exactly how to move forward with their cases. Either it’s nationality-based restrictions, public charge restrictions. And now simply because they’re in the United States, the government wants to now force them to go and prioritize one process over another.
Dana Taylor:
Who else is eligible to apply for a green card?
Adriel Orozco:
So individuals who apply for green cards generally fit into around, I would say three buckets. So the first bucket is family-based, which is the largest category. People who are immediate relatives can apply within the United States. There’s family preference categories, which are a little bit more distant relatives that we defined by our laws, few of which can apply within the United States, more apply from abroad. And then you have that second category, which are employment-based visas. They’re highly skilled workers through the H1B visa. You have other types of skilled workers, intra-company transferees, that kind of thing. That’s that second category, which is smaller than family-based, but still the second-largest category.
And then we have humanitarian-based people who apply because they’ve been survivors of crime, survivors of trafficking, they’re abandoned, abused or neglected children. Humanitarian-based visas now also make a significant portion, although the visas are generally capped there. And so those are the big three categories of individuals who are able to apply for a green card, either within the United States or abroad.
Dana Taylor:
What about asylum applicants and refugees?
Adriel Orozco:
So refugees and asylees, generally they don’t go through a consular process. One, because refugees have already been vetted, they’ve already gone through their process, they’ve been able to enter the United States as refugees, and then they can apply for a green card within a year. So that process has already been established by Congress.
Also, it’d be credibly unjustified to require somebody to go back to the country of birth that they had applied for refugee status from. And the same thing with asylees. Asylees apply for asylum within the United States. We have a process that allows people if they’re here in the United States, if they’re undocumented and they don’t have the ability to go back home due to fear of persecution and they obtain asylum, there’s a process to apply for a green card here within the United States. And so again, it would be incredibly odd to require these individuals to have to go back to their own countries.
It does seem that the USCIS policy memo that we’re talking about envisions that these individuals would not be covered by this policy. However, this policy does create a lot of confusion generally because it doesn’t have very clear categories of individuals who would not be covered. And so now we’re trying to figure out who’s in and who’s out in terms of who this actually applies to.
Dana Taylor:
What about undocumented immigrants who came for economic opportunity? Are they impacted by this policy change?
Adriel Orozco:
So there isn’t necessarily a category of individuals who have come for economic reasons as a way to get a green card. But we do know that the way that this policy memo is written, it does put an emphasis on discretion, particularly individuals who have failed to maintain their temporary immigration statuses in the United States. Those people tend to be folks who are pursuing status through family members. So spouses of US citizens, children, green card holders, that really seems to be the population that could be most heavily impacted at this time.
And so individuals who may have come to the United States 10, 20 years ago may be eligible to apply for a green card, finally decided to do so. And now it’s not clear if this policy is going to be impacting pending applications or just moving forward. That’s another huge confusion that this memo has created. However, those individuals who may have initially come for economic reasons but have married individuals within the United States, those individuals could potentially be negatively impacted by this change in policy.
Dana Taylor:
The USCIS says on their website that applicants will not be allowed to apply for green cards from within the US except in quote extraordinary circumstances. Does that apply to an H1B visa holder who has a job or a mother caring for her American child? What about someone enrolled in and paying for college? Did they define that for us?
Adriel Orozco:
They don’t. And interestingly, the press release does mention extraordinary circumstances, but the policy memo does not. It does call the process of getting a green card within the United States an extraordinary act. And so there is some confusion around the use of the language within the memo itself and then also how it’s publicly being spoken about by the agency. And we do know that there was a spokesperson from USCIS announcement that was talking about individuals who provide an economic benefit to the country or there’s such that national security components or concerns requiring them to leave the United States that they might be exempted from this policy. It’s not clear exactly how that’s going to be implemented.
We do know that in terms of the travel restrictions for individuals who are abroad, who aren’t able to come to the United States, there has been some exceptions that were announced by the government, particularly around doctors. However, we haven’t really seen any implementation of that. So it’s not very clear to us who this is going to apply to or not going to apply to. So we’re still waiting to see if maybe the agency provides more information or we might have to wait and see how it’s actually just implemented and hear from attorneys and their clients or others who are pursuing their green cards.
Dana Taylor:
It sounds like there will be a flood of applications routed through the consulates. To your knowledge, has the administration beefed up those staffs or otherwise streamlined the process to prevent a huge backlog?
Adriel Orozco:
No. In fact, we know that there has been restructuring of the Department of State. We do know that there are slower processes abroad for visa adjudication. And so there hasn’t been a commensurate even announcement that the government is trying to beef up resources abroad given that the large amount of individuals who could possibly be impacted by this policy. So again, it just falls into a pattern by the Trump administration to restrict legal immigration processes as well.
Dana Taylor:
What is the administration’s goal with this policy change? Did they lay that out?
Adriel Orozco:
So what the government is saying is that their interpretation of the law is that a person being able to pursue a green card within the United States, that should be an extraordinary event. There should be administrative grace that the agency allows these individuals to be able to get a green card within the United States. It, of course, does not actually highlight that Congress created this path and has reaffirmed this path over 20 times since it was created in 1952. However, essentially what it’s saying is that its method of merits preference is that individuals obtain green cards from abroad not within the United States.
And so it’s trying to append that process and really force people to have to leave the United States to do so. But one thing that the government has also not addressed is that unfortunately because of the laws that have been passed throughout the years, individuals who may be eligible to get a green card within the United States, once they leave the United States, they may no longer be eligible to obtain that green card from abroad.
For example, if there are family members who have a US citizen that they’re petitioning through, if they have any unlawful presence, they might be subject to a bar. And so then they go abroad, they’d have to request a particular hardship waiver, but they may not be eligible for the hardship waiver. So by forcing some people to go abroad, these individuals may not actually be eligible for a green card anymore.
So overall, what this potentially could do, one, it’s going to make people be fearful of trying to get a green card within the United States. And two, it might actually increase the population that might be subject to immigration enforcement within the United States because those individuals, either their application may be denied under this policy or they may just decide to not go forward with an eligibility they might have for a green card because of fear of what the government might require them to do.
Dana Taylor:
Adriel, when you look at the enormous disruption this change could cause to the lives of those living in the US on non-immigrant visas and their families, what are your biggest concerns?
Adriel Orozco:
I think this represents is a continuing attack on the integrity of the immigration system within the United States. People who are following the rules, who may be eligible under our laws to be able to get a green card now are once again facing uncertainty, not because there’s been a change in the law by Congress, but because this administration is pulling out a new novel interpretation and you do expect that there is going to be litigation against this policy memo, but at the end of the day, we understand that the overall goals of this administration is to create chaos, to create uncertainty so that individuals who may be able to benefit from our laws don’t. And so I think even if we think past this administration, there is just a lot of lack of trust, I think, that is being built into the system, so that’s going to take quite some time to rebuild.
Dana Taylor:
Adriel, thank you so much for joining me on The Excerpt. It was good to speak with you.
Adriel Orozco:
Thank you.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks for listening. I’m Dana Taylor. That’s today’s The Excerpt. Like and subscribe so you’re back with us tomorrow.

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