The new USCIS memo says every immigrant will have to leave the US while waiting for a green card, causing widespread confusion as experts scrambled to figure out what the new rules meant and what visa holders should do. The agency said a visa holder who is temporarily in the US and wants a green card must return to their home country to apply. The logic is this: a visa holder comes to the US temporarily, and the green card is for permanent residents, and so there is a conflict of intentions, and so people on the visa should not be allowed to stay in the US while waiting for a green card.
Top scientists will stop working and leave the country, Russian founder asks
Russian-born VC and founder Nick Davydov condemned the move and asked if it meant that every foreign-born scientist would have to close down their work and leave the country and wait for green cards in their native countries. “So everyone on an O1 or H1B visa has to stop working legally in the US, go back to their home country and wait for years of backlog? This includes top scientists from our universities, founders of billion-dollar companies. And this becomes even higher if we look at individual countries. Indians will have to wait for decades. The Russians have nowhere to go (there is no US embassy in Russia, hello?). “This is the worst imaginable way to disrupt important functions for the country and pretend that you are fighting some loophole,” Davydov said.Immigration expert James Blunt said that under this new policy, Melania Trump could also be asked to return to her country and wait for her green card. Blunt said, “USCIS is supposed to be the plumber maintaining the pipes of our immigration system. Instead, these guys are taking a hammer to the entire water line.”
Are H-1Bs exempt from the rule?
No, H-1Bs are not exempt from the new rule. The H-1B visa is considered a dual-intent nonimmigrant visa. The dual-intent part means that it is a temporary visa but a person with an H-1B visa may intend to immigrate permanently. But this does not exempt H-1B visa holders from the ‘go back to your country’ rule. USCIS noted in its memorandum that the adjustment of status is “extraordinary relief” and that “maintaining valid status in the dual intent category is not, in itself, sufficient to guarantee a favorable exercise of discretion.”“Immigration lawyers said the rule will almost certainly be legally challenged because there is some ambiguity in the memo and it is not what Congress wanted when they started the H-1B visa program.Immigration lawyer Cyrus Mehta said USCIS is creating new rules to deny non-citizens from getting green cards. Mehta said, “Although adjustment of status under INA 245 is discretionary, it has never been interpreted as an extraordinary form of relief and USCIS is inventing a new standard to deny non-citizens from obtaining green cards in the US.”Adjustment of status is the process of applying for a green card from inside the US rather than leaving the country for a visa interview.
