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Starting today, Sept. 18, USCIS officers can weigh an applicant's own use of nearly any means-tested public benefit, not just cash aid, when deciding a green card case — a discretionary standard laid out in the Federal Register's final rule.
- The shift is not retroactive. Benefits received before today are still judged under the narrower 2022 rule; only benefits an applicant personally receives on or after Sept. 18 fall under the new standard.
- USCIS will reject any Form I-485 filed today or later on the old edition — there's no overlap window
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Twenty-two states, Washington, D.C., and a coalition of cities sued on Sept. 14 to block the rule. No court had stepped in as of publication, so it took effect exactly as scheduled.
Hundreds of thousands of people file Form I-485 for a green card from inside the United States every year, and the test those applications now face looks almost nothing like the one that applied last week. For mixed-status households in particular, confusion is running high over which benefits, used by whom, can actually be held against a pending case.
