On May 21, 2026, USCIS put out a policy memo, PM-602-0199. Plainly put: when someone applies for a green card from inside the U.S. instead of going back to their home country to do it, the memo tells officers to treat that choice as a point against them — something they now have to make up for with unusually strong circumstances.
Immigration attorneys have two main problems with this. First, calling adjustment "extraordinary" doesn't match what the law actually says or how it grew over time. Second, the memo appears to cherry-pick old court cases — using ones that help its argument and skipping ones that don't.
A lot of this fight is about old Board of Immigration Appeals decisions. The worry: the memo points to a case about fraud to make ordinary green-card applications look "extraordinary," while quietly skipping cases that favor applicants.