Unfortunately, I think this is the point. They want to push the needle so that even legal immigration is restricted or difficult (unless you happen to pay them directly)

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/23/us/politics/trump-legal-i...

"intentionally malevolent" -> Stephen Miller's second name. The cruelty is and always was the point.

When you're in your visa or green card process it's not uncommon to be advised not to travel out of the country...

Yep. You're kind of in jail.

It doesn't mean that you cannot, it just means that it might complicate your already complicated application. So if a family member dies, maybe... But that's it

I don't think it applies to folks on H or L visas. Wording from the site:

"Nonimmigrants, like students, temporary workers, or people on tourist visas, come to the U.S. for a short time and for a specific purpose. Our system is designed for them to leave when their visit is over. Their visit should not function as the first step in the Green Card process. "

The cruelty is the point. They want people to leave so they can refuse to allow them back in. That's the goal. It's not more complicated than that.

These are all non-immigrant visa classes. The understanding is that you are temporarily immigrating to the United States. Why should it be surprising then that it is hard to become a permanent resident/immigrant if you explicitly came on a non-immigrant visa?

It’s intentional malevolence that’s a given from this admin

This.

I cannot be this calm about the administration that is all about the chaos and harm. Thank you for writing what I can't.

> Applying for a greencard while working on an H, J or O-class visa is extremely common.

But it’s not supposed to be extremely common to apply for a green card on an H or J visa. Those visas are explicitly “nonimmigrant” visas for people “temporarily” in the U.S. who have “no intention of abandoning” their foreign residence. Read the statute: https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:8%20section:1.... It’s subsections (a)(15), (a)(15)(H)(i)(b) and (a)(15)(J).

The people who thought of this are trying to return the practice to the actual intent of the law. The law was sold to the American public as a temporary worker program. It was not billed as a pathway for permanent residency.

> You can't reasonably get a job at a US firm while being physically located somewhere else and on the other side of an uncertain and greatly attenuated greencard application process. That's just not how this works.

For IT jobs - why can't you?

> Whoever thought of this is either intentionally malevolent or inexcusably incomprehending of the immigration process.

Have you not been paying attention?

I agree with mostly everything you’re saying; but it’s not uncommon to be processed via your local consulate, even if you are already living in the US.

This is usually just for the final issuing of the GC, and where USCIS approval has already happened (for instance, on an EB1A).

People frequently do this so they don’t have the travel restriction. Source: I just did it.

> Whoever thought of this is either intentionally malevolent or inexcusably incomprehending of the immigration process.

It's always weird to me to see confusion/uncertainty such as this.

It's intentionally malevolent. Obviously. MAGA types hate immigration. They make a lot of noise about illegal immigration, but the fact is that they hate all kinds of immigration (unless you're white-looking and conservative enough). Anything they can do to make it harder for non-citizens to stay in the US is exactly the point for them.

And more the better if they can sow fear and threat of cruelty while doing it. That's their playbook. It's MAGA 101.

Well, the short summary of it all is that the US is the very curious case of a superpower attempting to become a third world country.

GC issuances were already way down because DHS has basically stopped working on processing them. Now they're taking the next step and saying the ability to apply for a GC while in the US was a "loophole" which is utter horse shit; "adjustment of status" has been part of immigration since the 50's, and was expanded in the 90's and 2000 with support from all parties to increase efficiency, reduce the backlog and keep strong economic players in the US. You may notice that this adminstration has figured out they could weaponize inefficiency and a huge backlog if you don;t give a shit about the economic health of the country.

This is a long winded way of saying you're right with "intentionally malevolent"; this is the next step in a pretty transparent plan.

I think what this actually means is that you can apply permanent residency in the US, but you can only get the physical green card outside of the US when the case is approved. So, the last step to get the card need to from outside the country.

Intentionally malevolent is kind of their thing in this administration

Intentionally malevolent.

Not surprised. There are worse things in the works.

> Far from a loophole, applying from inside the US is the only reasonable way to apply for a greencard.

So that's kind of the point, to make the system arbitrary and capricious. It's to make the lives of immigrants more difficult.

For example, when one applies for adjustment of status ("AoS", meaning the I485), there are several things you can also apply for, most notably an Employment Authorization Document ("EAD", I765) and/or Advance Parole ("AP", I131) to allow you to travel.

In years gone by, you'd get the temporary documents in 3-4 months typically and your green card in under a year (after filing the I485, not for the entire process, which can be substantially longer).

So this administration has seemingly started a process for marriage cases where you file an I130 and I485 concurrently (the I130 is to prove you're free to marry and you have legally married, the I485 is to adjust status) where USCIS will approve the I130 but then just sit on the I485, not approving or denying the case, and never issue the EAD or AP so you can't work. Lots of people can't afford to not work for 1-2 years while this all plays out.

But that's the point.

Also, there are rumors that Palantir is getting invovled here. Rumor is that USCIS is sitting on I485 approvals while they wait for a new system to come online that will let USCIS look at way more data, likely including social media data, to find reasons to deny cases, so they don't want to approve cases before it's available. This is uncofirmed but there's a lot of anecodtal data for approved I130, no decision on the I485.

For marriage cases, this administraiton clearly wants people to consular process instead because the administration has broad powers that can't be challenged to simply withhold visas to nationals of certain countries and those bans can't be challenged in court, as per Trump v. Hawaii [1].

This is a problem for people who have made asylum claims because they realistically can't use the passport from whcih they've claimed asylum (if they even have it) and they certainly couldn't or shouldn't go back to their home country. A separate rule generally requires people to use the embassy of their country of birth. Again, that's to make life difficult.

It's not clear to me yet how this rule change affects those on H1Bs that want to adjust. Is the Trump admin going to require H1B holders to leave the country to adjust? That's going to create problems if so. The asylum case and the home country embassy rule mentioned above are two big reasons.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._Hawaii

I’d encourage you to read the policy before you get too upset.

The policy specifically calls out immigration violations as the problem. It doesn’t seem crazy to me to restrict the benefit of AOS in the US to people who have NOT committed immigration violations.

In addition, the policy specifically calls out that AOS in country is entirely appropriate where immigrants hold dual intent visas. This would include H1-B (skilled workers and family), L1 (corporate transfer) and K1/3 (spouses of citizens).

> Whoever thought of this is either intentionally malevolent or inexcusably incomprehending of the immigration process.

It’s the former: intentionally malevolent. Trump cabinet members, including Stephen Miller have said this is exactly why.

They are intentionally malevolent, and at this point, it's safe to assume that anyone making excuses for it is as well.

Don't assume incompetence at this point--Miller (and Trump) are anti-immigrant, full stop.

intentionally malevolent

Everything anti-immigration under both Trump terms comes directly from the fascist Stephen Miller. From blocking Muslim countries to trying to end birth right citizenship.

Of course he has full support from Trump who usually lies about knowing fascists he's had lunch with or tells to "stand back and stand by."

And endlessly lies to demonize immigrants. "They're not sending their best." "They're eating the cats and dogs."

SPLC has an article on Miller if you want to waste your time.

https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/stephen-...

This is the point. Welcome to America.

> Whoever thought of this is either intentionally malevolent or inexcusably incomprehending of the immigration process.

It surprises me a lot. You can be a politician making a career on a hatred of immigrants, but your prosperity is bound to the prosperity of USA, so why to destroy it? It cannot be just malevolent, it is plain sheer stupidity. It seems to me even worse than roman elites fighting their civil wars while Rome itself was crumbling. They were in a situation of a tragedy of commons, stupid but understandable. But USA politicians really going against immigration is just something else. You can always look tough on immigrants while not hurting brain drain from all over the world.

There were dumb rumors that Trump is a Kremlin agent, but now I don't think they are so dumb. It is not enough to be a fool to inflict so much damage to USA.

After 10 years of his bs I can't imagine anyone not realizing trump, maga, and heritage foundation people aren't intentionally malevolent

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The UK, the EU, Japan, and Australia all have identical rules to this policy.

There are people with billions of dollars that want the population of the US to drop significantly. It's hard to control 300+ million people, and that many people can just remove unpopular governments by marching in the millions. Also, I believe the "Georgia Guidestones" if I'm not mistaken, that have writing about reducing the population of the USA to 500,000. I much more manageable number. Or maybe I'm just reading too much into things.