For many in India, a US Green Card is a passport to their ‘land of dreams’ and seemingly ‘a life of comfort and bigger opportunities’. It is no wonder that more than 75% of US Green Card seekers are from India, although every year only 7% of the Green Cards—which grant lawful permanent residency rights—are given to Indians because of a strict 7% per-country cap.
It therefore goes without saying that Indians will be the worst-hit by a new rule announced by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on Friday, which stipulates that anyone seeking the much-coveted US Green Card will have to apply from an embassy or consulate from outside the US, “except in extraordinary circumstances”.
New York-based immigration lawyer Cyrus Mehta, in a social media post, termed the changes “absurd, illogical, cruel and in violation of law.” “Whilst Congress allows Green Card applicants to join new jobs under INA 204(j) if the jobs are similar, the USCIS memo now requires the applicant to leave the country before applying for the Green Card.”
The move will largely impact temporary workers, Indians overstaying on tourist visas, students, or families that stayed together whilst waiting out the lengthy approval process for the Green Card, and even those who continue to stay in the US illegally after being denied residency.
More specifically, it will affect H-1B visa holders, as 71% of all H-1B visa holders are Indians, numbering around 600,000 who are currently in the US. They will not be able to file the I-485 form from inside the US anymore, but will have to leave the country to apply. Form I-485 is the official legal application used by foreign citizens to apply for a Green Card from within the United States.
Another catch is that there are widespread job loss fears, as the validity of the H-1B visa effectively ends when the worker leaves the US, and employers may not keep jobs on hold for three to six months.
There are already about 1.1 million Indians waiting for their Green Cards in the US, with the waiting time for many exceeding 50 years.
Overstaying a US visa can lead to deportation, ineligibility for future visas, and re-entry bans lasting up to 10 years.
The new rule basically means that, for all practical purposes, anyone seeking a Green Card will have to go back to their country of origin to apply for it. By implication, for many Indians, it would amount to a difficult, complex, and possibly impossible situation to move abroad or be forced to return to India just to apply for the Green Card.
The latest change in US immigration laws under President Donald Trump is part of a large-scale “America First” measure to crack down on illegal immigration. As the Department of Homeland Security, which controls the USCIS, posted on ‘X’: “The era of abusing our nation’s immigration system is over.”