The Trump administration announced on Friday that, henceforth, temporary visa holders seeking green cards must return to their home countries to finish the process of obtaining green cards.
“From now on, an alien who is in the U.S. temporarily and wants a Green Card must return to their home country to apply, except in extraordinary circumstances,” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) spokesperson Zach Kahler said in a statement.
“When aliens apply from their home country, it reduces the need to find and remove those who decide to slip into the shadows and remain in the U.S. illegally after being denied residency,” he added.
USCIS is applying long-standing law and prior court decisions to require certain aliens with temporary visas who decide they want to permanently reside in the U.S. to return to their home countries to apply for permanent visas through the @StateDept.
We’re returning to the… pic.twitter.com/E2AFZkds5m
— USCIS (@USCIS) May 22, 2026
This new policy will reportedly improve the system by stressing the fact that tourists to America are expected to only stay temporarily, not settle down and start a life here as if a mere visit guarantees them all that.
“Nonimmigrants, like students, temporary workers, or people on tourist visas, come to the U.S. for a short time and for a specific purpose,” Kahler explained. “Our system is designed for them to leave when their visit is over. Their visit should not function as the first step in the Green Card process.”
He added that forcing U.S. consular offices abroad to deal with green card cases will free up “limited USCIS resources to focus on processing other cases that fall under its purview, including visas for victims of violent crime and human trafficking, naturalization applications, and other priorities.”
Democrats were not pleased with the policy change:
Forcing immigrants pursuing green cards legally to leave behind their homes, their jobs, and in some cases their families betrays the very promise that built this country. https://t.co/17UIREDvqI
— Governor Kathy Hochul (@GovKathyHochul) May 22, 2026
Among the aggrieved Democrats was California state Sen. Scott Wiener, who strongly supports exposing young children to graphic sexual content and concepts.
“The scale of this horrific change is massive,” he said in a statement. “A huge number of visa holders are potentially impacted, including U visa crime victims, people who marry citizens, folks who will be killed or imprisoned if they return to their countries to apply, startup founders and scientists who came here to build and discover, and many more.”
He evidently didn’t read the fine print, which clearly states that processing green cards abroad will allow USCIS to allocate more of its resources to helping “victims of violent crime and human trafficking.”
But Democrats weren’t alone in their grievances. A number of top corporate CEOs also lashed out.
Blake Scholl, the founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic, wrote on X that while he understands why “we don’t want people to come to the US to be criminals” and “mooch on welfare,” he doesn’t understand “why we make it harder for motivated, ambitious hardworking people to come to the land of opportunity.”
Nick Davidov, the founder of Davidovs Venture Collective, wrote on X that this policy change amounts to “the biggest bullshit move by DHS in its history.”
The biggest bullshit move by DHS in its history. So everyone on a O1 or H1B visa would have to stop working legally in the US, go back to their country and wait for years of backlog? This includes top scientists in our universities, founders of billion dollar companies (at least… https://t.co/Q427R67ZYq
— Nick Davidov (@Nick_Davidov) May 22, 2026
David J. Bier, the director of immigration studies at the controversial libertarian Cato Institute think tank, called for new leadership at USCIS.
“The policy is a radical expansion of DHS’s ‘quiet quitting’ on legal immigration that has been going on for months,” he wrote in a blog post. “Now USCIS’s new memorandum details a plan for mass denials. USCIS has gone from the ‘quiet-quit’ to walking out on 1.2 million green card applicants.”
“Forcing green card applicants to leave will render many green card applicants ineligible because, when they leave the United States, they will trigger the 3- or 10-year bars on receiving an immigrant visa based on accrual of unlawful presence,” he added.
