Under Trump’s new green card rules, Miami’s legal immigrants have fewer options | Opinion

The Trump administration is playing a cruel game with people trying to become legal immigrants. It’s a game of ever-changing rules, of obstacles that seem to be aimed at making the immigration process so confusing, expensive, scary and exhausting that applicants just give up.

The latest obstacle the administration has created has the potential to affect Miami like few other places in the country.

As the Herald reported, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued a memo last week about a new rule that requires most people seeking permanent residency to return to their home countries to apply for a green card at a U.S. consulate. Up until then, applicants routinely applied for residency without leaving the U.S. through a process known as “adjustment of status” used by over 500,000 people every year, the Herald reported.

“I think this is just another attempt to basically end the immigration system in the United States,” Ira Kurzban, a prominent Miami immigration attorney, told the Herald Editorial Board. Kurzban’s firm is among those challenging the Trump administration’s effort to end Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status designation.

The new green card rule could separate families and affect professionals and students — unless they qualify for “very narrow exceptions” that allow them to remain in the country, the Herald reported. Those exceptions include people with approved asylum or refugee cases who cannot return to their country and applicants who “provide an economic benefit or otherwise are in the national interest,” a USCIS spokesperson told Business Insider.

Kurzban said he believes the administration is targeting families specifically, including spouses, children and parents of U.S. citizens who are eligible for permanent residency.

Here’s the catch: As the Herald reported, countries like Haiti, Venezuela and Russia don’t have functioning diplomatic relations with the U.S., raising the question of whether people can actually apply for a green card from those parts of the world. The administration has imposed bans on travel and visa processing for 39 nations, including Cuba, Venezuela and Haiti. And those seeking asylum? That’s become harder under President Trump as his administration routinely denies their claims, according to the Herald. The administration suspended the country’s refugee program and has admitted mainly white South Africans as refugees.

USCIS has said the intent of the new rule is to “ensure aliens navigate our nation’s immigration system properly.” But after adding up all the administration’s moves since Trump returned to office, the real point seems to be closing avenues of legal immigration. Voters — especially in Miami and other places that have thrived thanks to immigration — must wonder whether this is making the country better and safer, as Trump promised on the campaign trail.

There’s still a lot of confusion on how the new rules will be applied — and lawyers are vowing to fight them — but here’s how they could work:

An American citizen marries a foreigner, but before the spouse can obtain a green card, the spouse must return to their country of origin to wait months, if not years, for an approval, potentially leaving jobs and family behind.

Now, say the spouse came to the U.S. on a tourist visa and overstayed it. Kurzban said the spouse would still be eligible for a green card, but if they leave the U.S. to apply for one, they’ll trigger a 1996 federal law that says people who overstay their visa for six months and then leave the U.S. aren’t allowed back for three years. If they overstayed one year or longer, they are banned for 10 years, he said.

The larger point appears to be to make relatives of American citizens deportable. If federal immigration agents deny a spouse's adjustment of status for not leaving the country to apply, they may find the applicant out of legal status and subject to deportation, Kurzban said.

For workers on employer-sponsored visas, the scenario could become even more difficult. Leaving the U.S. to wait for a green card could put their jobs at risk and leave employers without labor.

Wasn’t Trump going to deport the worst of the worst — mostly migrants who commit crimes? We wonder how this latest move accomplishes that goal given that the green card process already requires thorough vetting of applicants. If the goal is to end legal immigration options, then the administration looks closer to success.