The Trump administration announced on Friday that foreigners in the country seeking a green card, which grants permanent US residency, must apply from their home countries.

“From now on, an alien who is in the US temporarily and wants a green card must return to their home country to apply, except in extraordinary circumstances,” US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) spokesperson Zach Kahler said in a statement.

“Nonimmigrants like students, temporary workers, and people on tourist visas come to the US for a short time and for a specific purpose,” Kahler said.

“Our system is designed for them to leave when their visit is over,” he said. “Their visit should not function as the first step in the green card process.”

Immigrants feel shockwave

The immigration advocacy group FWD.us described the radical shift as potentially creating “chaos and imposing massive costs on immigrants who have lived and worked legally in the United States for many years.” 

For Filipinos specifically, who have built entire career pathways and family structures around the adjustment-of-status process, it is a fundamental disruption of life plans made in good faith under prior rules. 

Immigration lawyers pushed back, noting that it was a longstanding practice for foreigners to adjust their status in the US and the policy upends decades of adjustment-of-status processing. 

Immigrant Filipinos are being advised to consult an immigration attorney immediately, particularly to assess whether their visa category might qualify for the H-1B dual intent or “national interest” exemption, and to ensure that they do not leave the US until they have legal clarity.

Filipino nurses and healthcare workers would be hit hardest. Filipino immigrants are concentrated overwhelmingly in healthcare occupations, primarily nursing, among employment-based green card recipients. 

Filipinos are one of the largest sources of foreign-trained nurses in US hospitals. Many of them are mid-process, already living and working in the US on H-1B, TN, or EB-3 tracks, waiting for their priority dates to become current. 

Until very recently, there was cautious optimism from a January 2026 Visa Bulletin cut-off date of 15 October 2024, the unskilled workers category for Filipinos, that leapfrogged by 18 months to “current” in April 2026, meaning there was no backlog for Filipino green card applicants in that category. This policy now threatens that progress, being “current” means nothing if they are forced to leave the US to apply and risk reentry. 

A common pathway for Filipinos has been to arrive on a B-2 tourist visa, marry a US citizen, and adjust their status within the US. That path is now essentially closed except in “extraordinary circumstances.”

1-M permits yearly

According to The Washington Post, the United States grants more than one million green cards each year and, up until now, more than half of applicants were already in the United States.

Kahler said having green card applicants apply from their home nations “reduces the need to find and remove those who decide to slip into the shadows and remain in the US illegally after being denied residency.”

He said green card applications will be handled by the State Department at US consular offices abroad.

President Donald Trump campaigned for the White House on a pledge to expel millions of undocumented migrants, and his administration has also closed several legal pathways to US residency since he took office.

Also, those affected include many technology workers on temporary visas who might be eligible for green cards. 

This includes top scientists in US universities and founders of billion-dollar companies. 

People from India would have to wait through years of backlogs if they stopped working and went home to apply for green cards, and people from Russia would be unable to apply at all because there’s no US embassy there. 

The USCIS announcement did refer to “extraordinary” circumstances that might allow continued processing of green cards in the United States, but it did not elaborate. 

According to a policy memo issued Friday, USCIS agents “must consider and weigh all the relevant evidence” and determine “if approval of the alien’s adjustment of status application is in the best interest of the United States.”