What Trump's dramatic green card announcement means for WA

A Trump administration news release Friday morning announcing green card seekers already inside the U.S. would have to leave the country dropped like a bombshell.

This is probably the single biggest thing they could have done," said Seattle immigration lawyer Tahmina Watson. The announcement seemingly upended long-standing practice and will likely lead to a vast increase in family separations and workplace disruptions, she said.

But by midday, at least a few others came to the conclusion the consequences may not be so dramatic. "On one level, you could read it as, OK, nothing has changed," said Abtin Bahador, another Seattle immigration attorney.

Certainly, most immigration attorneys in the Seattle area, as around the country and even the world, were trying to figure out what the announcement and an accompanying policy memo mean. The two documents don't exactly line up.

Like lots of shock-and-awe announcements by the administration, many questions remained, such as whether the policy memo applies to skilled workers on H-1B visas, which are held by thousands in tech industry centers like Washington.

Legal challenges are expected. "Either we're going to bring the case or we're going to help someone else to bring the case," said Matt Adams, legal director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project.

The line in the news release that shocked the immigration law world: "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."

The news release and memo focus on "adjustment of status," one way people can apply for a green card. People applying this way are already in the U.S. and, historically, have largely not been required to leave the country while their applications are pending. In Washington, nearly 160,000 people living in the U.S. obtained green cards through this process in the decade ending in 2023, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data. Many who did so were sponsored by immediate family members who are U.S. citizens, others by employers. Still others took advantage of pathways open to them after obtaining asylum or humanitarian visas.

USCIS spokesperson Zach Kahler said the policy announced Friday "allows our immigration system to function as the law intended instead of incentivizing loopholes. 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."

"Nonimmigrants, like students, temporary workers, or people on tourist visas, come to the U.S. for a short time and for a specific purpose. Our system is designed for them to leave when their visit is over," Kahler continued.

Only people who enter the country legally are eligible to apply for green cards from within the U.S. but they may fall out of legal status, say if they overstayed a visa, married a U.S. citizen and continued to live in the country while their green card application was pending.

That hasn't been a problem up until now. But the new policy - when read in the harshest light - could cause those immigrants to be put in deportation proceedings or even detained, according to Adams.

The policy could also, by forcing them to leave the country, trigger three- or 10-year bars to returning to the U.S. that kick in once someone has accrued more than six months or a year of unlawful presence in the U.S., respectively, said Jay Gairson, a Seattle University adjunct law professor.

Even if none of those things happened, green card applicants could wind up stuck outside the country for years due to backlogs at embassies and consulates, where people need to apply for green cards outside the country.

All those scenarios are scary for a lot of people. Yet, digging into the six-page policy memo made Bahador and colleague Jeng-Ya Chen cautiously optimistic, they said in a joint telephone interview. They expect longer delays in processing these cases, but not necessarily near-blanket denials.

For one thing, unlike the news release, the memo does not actually say exceptions to applying from outside the country will only be warranted in "extraordinary circumstances," they noted. Instead, it tells USCIS officers to "weigh all positive and negative factors, including family ties" and the applicant's "moral character."

The memo also says officers denying an application must write an analysis explaining why negative factors outweigh the positive. Chen questioned whether officers would have the time and resources needed to do that if the plan is to deny every case begun inside the country.

While the memo stresses that the administration has discretion over whether to grant green cards to people already living in the U.S., that has always been the case, Bahador said.

Seattle immigration attorney Emilia Liu expressed a similar sentiment. Liu said she thinks the memo is meant to signal an increasing strictness in granting applications, but how that will play out isn't clear.

It's also unclear whether the policy will impact those holding H-1B visas, a major foreign worker program used to hire people in fields including technology, academia and medicine. While not calling out these temporary workers explicitly, part of the memo suggests it's fine for them to apply for green cards from inside the U.S. since their visas allow for an intention to immigrate. Yet, a footnote reminds officers that even people who hold such visas can be turned down.

That's always been true. H-1B visa holders, along with everybody else, might be disqualified for a range of reasons. Still, said Shev Dalal-Dheini, governmental relations director for the American Immigration Lawyers Association: "It seems like they're talking out of both sides of their mouth.

Kahler, of USCIS, did not provide specific answers when asked to clarify how the policy applies to H-1B visa holders and people with pending applications. Nor did he explain what the administration means by extraordinary circumstances.

He did, however, email a comment that, like the memo, suggests a more measured approach than the initial announcement.

"While we work to operationalize this, people who present applications that provide an economic benefit or otherwise are in the national interest will likely be able to continue on their current path while others may be asked to apply abroad depending on individualized circumstances," he said.

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This story was originally published May 22, 2026 at 11:41 PM.