Immigration Update |
USCIS Policy Memo, May 22, 2026
"From now on, an alien who is in the U.S. temporarily and wants a Green Card must return to their home country to apply, except in extraordinary circumstances." That's USCIS Spokesman Zach Kahler, on May 22, 2026, Friday before Memorial Day weekend, in a press release accompanying a new policy memo: PM-602-0199.
The memo announces that adjustment of status is "an extraordinary relief" that permits applicants to bypass the ordinary consular visa process. The immigration bar spent the weekend reading it. Here's how I read it.
The memo relies heavily on older Board of Immigration Appeals and federal court language describing adjustment as "extraordinary" and "a matter of grace." But the cases it cites involved specific adverse facts: misrepresentation, false claims to U.S. citizenship, unauthorized employment, prior overstays. The memo takes language from those fact-specific decisions and stretches it into a general standard.
What the memo does not do is rewrite the USCIS Policy Manual. Footnote 19 of the memo itself points back to the existing discretionary framework in Volume 1, Chapter 8 and Volume 7, Chapter 10. That framework says threshold eligibility for the benefit is a positive factor. And absent negative factors, USCIS should "ordinarily exercise discretion positively." Denial without negative factors would be, in the Policy Manual's own words, "an inappropriate use of discretion."
The memo directs officers to weigh positive and negative factors in the totality of the circumstances. It calls out immigration violations, unauthorized employment, fraud, and criminal history as examples of adverse factors. For applicants with those issues in their background, the discretion analysis under this memo carries more weight than before.
For applicants without adverse factors, the existing Policy Manual guidance remains intact and unchanged by this memo.
The memo will almost certainly face legal challenges.
The press release says "extraordinary circumstances." The Policy Manual says "ordinarily exercise discretion positively." Both are current USCIS guidance. Read them side by side.