‘It’s really scary’: Trump administration green card messaging prompts confusion and anxiety

Summary

• A Trump administration directive threatened to require most green card applicants to wait out the process in their home countries.
• The confusing messaging has created anxiety for millions of immigrants with pending applications.
• Immigration attorneys say the policy change represents another effort to curtail legal immigration and could trigger significant brain drain.

AI-generated summary was reviewed by a CNN editor.

Francisco and Julia’s world together began at the end of the Earth.

The couple, both research scientists, first met while working in Antarctica in January 2024. Their relationship quickly progressed as each took turns visiting each other’s homes — his in Chile, and hers in the US. Last summer, after Francisco met Julia’s family, they began planning seriously for the future.

“We decided we want to spend the rest of our lives together,” Francisco said.

The couple, who spoke with CNN on the condition that only their first names be published, got married last year, and Francisco applied for a green card that would allow him to permanently live and work in the country. They met with several lawyers who said Francisco would be able to apply to change his immigration status while living with Julia in the US rather than returning to his home in Chile.

But the Trump administration’s recent whiplash messaging on its green card policy threatened to interrupt their burgeoning lives — both as a couple and now as a family. Julia is expecting twins later this year.

A directive announced last week threatened to require most applicants for permanent residency to wait out the process in their home country. But barely a week after it was announced, the Department of Homeland Security sought to backpedal, claiming it was simply a reminder that US Citizenship and Immigration Services officers had discretion on the decisions they made on individual cases.

At its most minimal interpretation, the change simply gives individual adjudicators more discretion to determine whether immigrants requesting an adjustment to their status can stay in the United States while that process plays out. At its maximum interpretation, it could have required most people with pending applications, like Francisco, to suddenly leave the US — and their families and lives behind.

“This change in policy puts us in a situation where we made a family decision based on a certain policy expectation, and now that’s been changed retroactively,” Julia said. “We’re looking at the possibility of, if that applied to our case, that I would be alone with two newborns in a full-time job.”

“It’s really scary to think about being separated when the kids are little,” she added. Julia and Francisco spoke with CNN before DHS sought to roll back the most expansive interpretation of the policy directive.

In public statements announcing the policy, US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the government agency that is in charge of the country’s legal immigration system, said the change allows the US immigration system to be “fairer and more efficient” while eliminating loopholes that could allow immigrants to “slip into the shadows” and live illegally in the US if their residency application is denied.

The initial public announcement of the policy appeared to take a more restrictive posture than the policy itself. The announcement says exceptions would be granted only in “extraordinary circumstances” without laying out what exactly may make one’s circumstances extraordinary.

CNN spoke with half a dozen immigration attorneys, all of whom said it is too soon to tell how sweeping the changes would ultimately be. The lawyers said they are making clear to their clients that this represents simply a change in policy, not in law, and that the policy would almost certainly be challenged in court.

“I do not expect a massive series of denials, plus there is no way they can apply this memo retroactively,” said Charles Kuck, an Atlanta-based immigration attorney. “I bet you there’s a million pending adjustment applications, easy. You cannot say now to those million people, ‘Thanks for your money, I need you to go to your home country and restart this all over again.’ No judge upholds that — none.”

“So, I’m telling clients, ‘Sit back, relax, let this play out, follow the plan that your lawyer put in place, and you’re going to be OK,’” he added.

While USCIS described adjustment of status as a “loophole,” the process exists in a statute created by Congress and cannot be unilaterally scuttled by administrative policy.

“When Congress amends and betters a law 20 times, it’s hard to call that a loophole, as [USCIS] did in this policy announcement,” Kuck said. “It is the law, and the law will continue to allow for adjustment of status for individuals who otherwise qualify inside the United States.”

USCIS adjudicators appear to be applying aspects of the policy already. A request for evidence on a pending adjustment of status case obtained by CNN asks applicants to specify whether one of a dozen factors that adjudicators could consider weighing in the applicant’s benefit could apply to them — such as hardship to the applicant’s family if they are denied, evidence of value or service to the community and fluency or proficiency in English.

But there is no doubt the messaging has sowed chaos among potentially millions of immigrants — both those waiting on their adjustment of status application and those who had been considering applying for a green card.

That was likely the point, several immigrations attorneys said.

“They want it to be arbitrary and capricious,” said immigration attorney Jim Hacking. “They want people to be scared, and they want people to leave the US voluntarily.”

It represents just the latest way the Trump administration is seeking to curb avenues of legal — not just illegal — immigration, including making efforts to significantly reduce asylum claims; significantly curtailing the temporary protected status that allows those fleeing natural disasters or wars to live in the US without fear of deportations; halting almost all refugee admissions; and restricting work and student visas.

“I think this is yet another very clear indication that this is a nationalist campaign, not just a campaign to clean up the immigration service,” said Maureen Sweeney, a University of Maryland law professor and the director of the school’s Chacón Center for Immigrant Justice.

“I don’t think this administration was ever interested in a functional immigration system,” she added. “I think that they decided early on that it was in their political interests to shut down as much immigration as they could. I think they decided that anti-immigrant efforts — the splashier, the better — play well politically for them, and that’s what this is.”

The Department of Homeland Security declined to respond to CNN’s request for comment on those criticisms.

Those efforts to curtail legal immigration have already led to a significant brain drain in the US among highly qualified scientists, doctors and engineers who otherwise would have stayed to work or study in the country. Technology industry workers, in particular, were among those who lamented the new green card policy after it was announced last week.

Julia and Francisco, both of whom have PhDs and are active in their communities, may become the latest examples of that brain drain. Francisco is also a citizen of the European Union, and the couple is weighing alternatives.

“We have options, and we’re fighting really hard to stay in the US and contribute economically to the US,” Julia said. “But if that’s not a possibility, we are competitive in other markets, and we’ll have no other choice but to take our family elsewhere.”