WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Donald Trump’s administration announced last week that it would require green card seekers to apply from their home countries instead of in the U.S., immigration attorney Flavia Santos Lloyd’s phone began ringing off the hook with clients worried about the implications for them.
Lloyd wasn’t sure what to tell them, but she knew the confusing new policy would slow down applications.
“It has a chilling effect because we have some cases that we were going to proceed and I can tell already, we should wait and see what’s going on,” she said.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced Friday that foreigners in the U.S. who want a green card will need to leave and apply in their home country, barring some unspecified exceptions.
The announcement, which potentially affects hundreds of thousands of green card applicants a year, was the latest immigration policy unveiled by Trump’s Republican administration to stun and confound lawyers, advocates and immigrants. It’s also part of a pivot by the administration to target legal pathways to immigration, after focusing since last year mostly on migrants in the U.S. illegally.