Last month, the Trump administration sent the immigration-law world into a frenzy with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ sudden release of a memo concerning the processing of green-card applications filed within the United States. The timing of the release—right before the long Memorial Day holiday weekend—its ambiguity, and the broad potential implications sparked exactly the sort of public confusion that the administration had likely hoped for.

Very basically, there are two procedures by which a person can receive permanent residence: If they are abroad, they can go through a U.S. Consulate under the State Department, and if they are in the U.S., they can “adjust” their status from whatever they had before—whether that was a student or work visa, temporary protected status, or nothing at all—to permanent residence from within the country. The latter is baked into the law as a discretionary grant that is, despite USCIS’s description of it as an “extraordinary relief,” closer to the norm. Homeland Security data from the first quarter of the 2025 fiscal year, the latest available, shows that of some 350,000 new permanent residencies issued, about 190,000—54 percent—were adjustments, which is in keeping with historical trends.

The memo takes the position that most people who have received a visa or parole or other temporary status should presumptively be in the country only for that period and for those purposes, should leave the country to go through consular processing if they opt to apply for permanent residence, and receive adjustment only through “administrative grace” in extraordinary circumstances. The actual guidance to USCIS officers, though, is short and vague, insinuating but not directly establishing that the implied intent of an applicant to stay in the country despite having gotten a nonimmigrant visa could be a mark against them, and instructing evaluators to assess all positive and negative factors in making a decision. It seems as if those most at risk of having their applications rejected would be people who have overstayed temporary visas, but there are no specific categories laid out.

Despite some apocalyptic social media pronouncements........

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