The United States temporarily suspended visa processing worldwide Tuesday, and green card applicants already facing lengthy backlogs now face more uncertainty about their application status. The Department of State, which processes immigration applications abroad, paused all visa processing to train embassy and consular staff on new public charge rules, which could deny applications if an individual appears likely to rely on government benefits. The latest action also arrives after a series of Trump administration measures that have slowed or paused different parts of the legal immigration system, including green card processing for some refugees, asylum seekers and nationals of countries targeted by travel restrictions.
"I don’t know if the timing is coincidental or deliberate, but this 'pause' that involves the cancellation of immigrant visa interviews worldwide, comes at a critical moment," Elissa Taub, a partner at Siskind Susser in Memphis, Tennessee, told Newsweek. "First, we are approaching the end of the government’s fiscal year, and instead of focusing on issuing all available immigrant visas by September 30, the government mass canceled interviews with no promise or hint as to when processing of those cases will resume. If the government does not use all the available visas, they go to waste, which would be awful for the many people waiting patiently for years for their chance to immigrate to the U.S." Newsweek reached out to the State Department via its contact form Wednesday morning.
The newest pause primarily affects people pursuing permanent residence from outside the U.S. through a process known as consular processing. Many of these applicants have already secured approval of an underlying immigrant petition and completed extensive paperwork through the National Visa Center. The embassy interview is typically one of the final hurdles before an immigrant visa can be issued and the applicant can travel to the United States as a lawful permanent resident.
For those individuals, canceled or postponed interviews can mean months of additional uncertainty after years of waiting in family- or employment-based visa backlogs. Applicants with scheduled interviews have already begun receiving notices that their appointments were canceled or delayed. Taub said that while the new public charge assessment appeared to be linked to the pause, the State Department had not officially adopted the policy.
"That begs the question as to what new rules or standards they are teaching their consular officers to apply," she said. "It is frustrating that the State Department is making rules in secret with no public notice or advice and expecting people to comply with the secret rules or risk denial of applications that might have been pending for years. It would be helpful for the agency to communicate any new expectations with the public so that individuals who might have been waiting years for their application to be considered can be fully prepared." Two major routes to obtaining a green card exist, and one group is largely unaffected by the State Department pause.
The first is Adjustment of Status, a process used by people already inside the U.S. These applicants file Form I-485 with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), rather than the State Department, and typically remain in the country while their application is reviewed.
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