The Trump administration’s new policy that requires most immigrants seeking green cards to leave the US and apply from abroad is creating uncertainty for hundreds of thousands of people whose family- and employment-based permanent residency applications are already pending with the authorities.
Some 540,000 family-based and around 170,000 employment-based green card applications are currently pending with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), show data from the agency. A May 22 memo announcing the policy did not specify whether it would apply only to new applications or also have retrospective effect.
