Trump’s New Green Card Policy Punishes Legal Immigrants Without Solving Anything
There is little question that the new Trump administration policy to require most foreigners seeking green cards to return to their home countries to wait endlessly is unnecessarily disruptive, cruel and based on anti-immigrant bias.
But the bigger question is this: What problem does this policy resolve exactly?
As described, the change in policy – the first in 60 years and apparently requiring no other administrative hurdle – will mean hundreds of thousands of immigrants following the strictest legal routes are suddenly being ordered out of the country to await word that may never come that their case finally has been reviewed.
Many will be forced to return to situations that are dangerous or that represent economic hardship, and it will mean more family separations, of course. But millions of Americans will be affected as well, since more than 70 percent of green card requests are from those with family already here or those whose love affairs or jobs have prompted their relocation.
Indeed, most recently, this order would have adversely affected our daughter-in-law, who has been here from Spain legally for five years with legal work permits until the system finally called up her naturalization processing and approved it. Requiring that she return to Europe likely would have resulted in her husband, our son, moving to Spain rather than for her to continue working legally, paying taxes, contributing to U.S. interests. There never was a question about her intent or about her ability to support herself or about following the rules.
The whole, complicated immigration process is meant to review records of individuals for criminal behavior or disqualifying behavior. This memo is a broadbrush approach towards simply wiping out even applying for permanent status.
So, again, what problem are we trying to solve, other than to spread the unending swell of distaste for illegal immigration – particularly among non-White migrants – to legal immigration that the Trump administration insists that it supports.
Needless to say, Melania Trump was not forced to leave the U.S. for her permanent legal status to change.
The Explanations
The announcement that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, USCIS, the agency that oversees the legal immigration system, suddenly would grant green cards to people inside the country only in “extraordinary circumstances” is shaking up legal immigration – and seems bound to prompt lawsuits and unwanted review.
Those applying for permanent residency, apparently including those cases already in process, will have to go through consular processing from outside the country, according to the USCIS announcement.
A USCIS memo said, “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.” Of course, those applying for green card status are known to the USCIS, having filed all the requited legal paperwork , including their addresses and phone numbers.
The effects will be seen in more split families, longer waits at underserved consulates abroad, and likely fewer green cards than the 1.4 million issued annually, including 820,000 from within the U.S. . – meaning that on a steady basis, the government found a million people a year as individuals eligible for this benefit.. Apart from all else, the State Department just fired another 250 consular staffers around the world, making the job of vetting green cards from overseas more difficult.
As The Washington Post notes, the new guidelines arrive as the Trump administration has sought to sharply restrict legal immigration pathways to the country. The administration’s ICE campaign against those here without proper documents has spilled over into cancellation of asylum programs, revocation of temporary protective status and more rigidly reduced immigration caps altogether. Under the changes in refugee policies, 6,300 White South Africans were allowed into the U.S. this year, and only three others.
Over 10 years, most who became legal permanent residents while in the U.S. were sponsored by a relative or an employer. There are various pathways to obtain green cards, permanent legal residency and work permits one step short of naturalization. People with temporary visas can apply to adjust their status if they are the spouse of a U.S. citizen, for example, as do more than 70 percent of applicants.
USCIS Director Joseph Edlow has said that there could be exceptions to the new guidance for people in the United States on “dual intent” visas that allow them to pursue a permanent legal status while residing in the country temporarily. But he wrote that “as a general matter the discretionary approval of such a request is extraordinary given Congress’s intent that aliens should depart once the purpose for which they sought parole or nonimmigrant admission from [the Department of Homeland Security] has been accomplished.”
Immigration advocates say that once people leave, it is unlikely that they will return – which may be the real point here. Information and past statistics on the distribution of green cards suggest that the Trump administration is looking well beyond the facts to pursue an anti-immigration ideology rather than processes to streamline or rationalize a complicated process.
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