USCIS Limits Green Card Adjustments to Extraordinary Circumstances

US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced on Friday that it will grant adjustment of status applications only in extraordinary circumstances. The change affects immigrants already in the United States who seek to apply for permanent residency without first leaving the country.

A USCIS spokesperson stated that applicants who provide an economic benefit or serve the national interest may still qualify for exemptions. It remains unclear how broadly the administration will apply the new restrictions or how many people will be affected.

Blake Scholl, founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic, wrote on X that he understands restrictions on applicants who may commit crimes or rely on public assistance. He added that he does not understand why the rules make it harder for motivated and hardworking people to enter the United States.

He wrote that individuals on O-1 or H-1B visas would have to stop working legally, return to their home countries, and wait through years of backlog. Andrew Ng, AI entrepreneur and co-founder of Coursera, called the requirement to apply from outside the United States a capricious attack on legal immigration.

He stated that the policy will hurt families, reduce the number of doctors, teachers, and scientists, and damage American competitiveness in artificial intelligence. Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, wrote that the policies represent a harmful move for technology, business, and the United States broadly.

He asked whether AI researchers, employees, and students will now have to leave the country and wait through a backlog process. Rep. Yvette Clarke, a Democrat from New York, called the policies a disgrace. She stated that the changes will remove talented and hardworking immigrants from the economy, add to an already overburdened backlog, and further damage an already broken immigration system.