SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
birthright citizenship
Trump's New Green Card Application Policy Is Unlawful, Immoral, and Xenophobic
The policy effectively redesigns the system such that for some nationalities—predominantly those from African, Asian, Caribbean, and Latin American countries—no realistic legal pathway to obtain a green card exists.
May 26, 2026
On May 22, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services issued a policy memo announcing a major shift in immigration policy. As USCIS Spokesperson Zach Kahler explains: “From now on, an alien who is in the US temporarily and wants a Green Card must return to their home country to apply, except in extraordinary circumstances. This policy allows our immigration system to function as the law intended instead of incentivizing loopholes.”
This new policy is unlawful, immoral, and xenophobic. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) as well as the LIFE Act, Congress created various pathways for immigrants to apply for “adjustment of status.” This allows a temporary legal resident to apply for legal permanent resident (LPR) status without having to leave the US.
Such adjustments are not limited to “extraordinary circumstances.” As the USCIS Policy Manual makes clear:
Aliens who are present in the United States and who are beneficiaries of approved immigrant petitions may generally file an application with USCIS to adjust their status to that of an LPR, or they may depart the United States and apply for an immigrant visa abroad. One reason Congress created the adjustment of status provision was to enable certain aliens physically present in the United States to become LPRs without incurring the expense and inconvenience of traveling abroad to obtain an immigrant visa. Congress has added additional adjustment of status provisions to: Ensure national security and public safety; Advance economic growth and a robust immigrant labor force; Promote family unity; and Accommodate humanitarian resettlement.
If Congress intended “adjustment of status” to be limited to “extraordinary circumstances,” then they would have made that clear. What’s more, if that was their intention, then they would not have consistently added more adjustment provisions. The fact of the matter is that neither the plain language of the relevant statutes nor the history of “adjustment of status” guidelines justify this policy revision. Rather than “returning to the original intent of the law” as USCIS Director Joseph Edlow claims, the agency is twisting the law to satisfy President Donald Trump’s desires.
That USCIS had the audacity to even release such an obviously politically motivated and illegal policy speaks to the broader decline in the integrity of American institutions.
As former USCIS senior adviser Doug Rand noted, “Trump has banned people from over 100 countries from returning to the US, so forcing them to go abroad for consular processing is no pathway at all.” This includes nationals from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, Somalia, and Yemen—countries that Trump has bombed in his second term; as well as Cuba, which is still suffering under a US oil blockade and sanctions.
For those from countries not included in one of Trump’s travel bans, the new process will be significantly more expensive, time-consuming, and complicated. Applicants will be forced to leave their loved ones and wait months or years before they can return to the US.
Now, the memo does acknowledge “limited exceptions” to this new requirement. This includes people on “dual intent” visas such as the H-1B (for specialized workers) or O-1 (for those with “extraordinary ability or achievement”), as well as “immigrant categories where only adjustment of status provides a pathway to permanent resident status.” While the memo fails to specify, the latter may include refugees and asylum-seekers.
Two points are worth emphasizing here: First, the policy memo states that “adjustment under most provisions is granted only as ‘a matter of discretion and administrative grace.’” Maintaining lawful status under a H-1B or O-1 visa “is not sufficient, on its own, to warrant a favorable exercise of discretion.” As Kahler further clarified in an email to Newsweek on May 24, “People who present applications that provide an economic benefit or otherwise are in the national interest will likely be able to continue on their current path.” He added, others “may be asked to apply abroad depending on individualized circumstances.”
Ultimately, however, as the memorandum makes clear, USCIS officers are advised to consider “if approval of the alien’s adjustment of status application is in the best interest of the United States.” This means weighing multiple factors, including “the applicant’s moral character.”
Second, even if one of the “limited exceptions” applies to refugees, it may amount to very little given the Trump administration’s concerted efforts to weaken the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP).
In October 2025, the Trump administration lowered the cap on the number of refugees the US will admit to 7,500. Between October 2025 and April 2026, the US only admitted 4,499 refugees. All, except three from Afghanistan, were South African.
In November 2025, USCIS issued a memo ordering the review of about 233,000 refugees who entered the US between January 20, 2021 and February 20, 2025. It also halted all processing of green card applications for refugees who entered during that period.
As part of their operations in Minnesota in January 2026, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and USCIS launched a sweeping initiative to re-review and potentially terminate the protective status of refugees who had not yet obtained permanent resident status. This led to more than 100 refugees with no criminal records being arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on allegations of fraud, transferred to detention centers in Texas, and threatened with deportation.
The USCIS policy effectively redesigns the system such that for some nationalities—predominantly those from African, Asian, Caribbean, and Latin American countries—no realistic legal pathway to obtain a green card exists. For all others, it becomes a matter of administrative discretion—or more precisely, Trump’s discretion. The true dividing line here is not whether one contributes economically to the US or follows its laws, but rather whether Trump believes a person comes from a “shithole” country or a “nice” country.
This divide has a further implication: Under Trump’s birthright ban, only children born of US citizens and lawful permanent residents automatically acquire citizenship. If the Supreme Court upholds his order, and if this policy revision survives its inevitable lawsuit, then it would dramatically alter who could become a citizen. This has been an underlying goal of Trump’s immigration agenda from the start.
Kahler insists that this policy is necessary to close a dangerous loophole that immigrants exploit to stay in the US indefinitely. He remarks, “When aliens apply from their home country, it reduces the need to find and remove those who decide to slip into the shadows and remain in the US illegally after being denied residency.”
This is bullshit, plain and simple. US Customs and Border Protection calculated that in 2024 the US visa overstay rate was 1.15%. “In other words, 98.85% of the in-scope nonimmigrant visitors departed the United States on-time and in accordance with the terms of their admissions.”
The true goal rather is to force people to leave the US and have consular officers abroad quickly and quietly reject their applications without any consideration for due process or the applicant’s legal rights. As the CATO Institute reports, even prior to this new policy, DHS had already cut green card approvals by roughly half.
Hopefully, the courts or Congress will intervene and put an end to this policy. However, that USCIS had the audacity to even release such an obviously politically motivated and illegal policy speaks to the broader decline in the integrity of American institutions. Even if this attempt fails, the Trump administration will continue to go after immigrants. They will not stop; so, neither can we. We must remain vigilant and continue to keep our communities safe.
Keep ReadingShow Less
The 14th Amendment Is 160 Years Old Today—And We Are in Serious Trouble
From the courageous radicalism of Thaddeus Stevens to the tragic depths Donald Trump has brought us, our nation has become horribly lost on what it means to be a citizen and why this democratic republican was created in the first.
May 06, 2026
On May 6, 1866, exactly one hundred and sixty years ago today, Thaddeus Stevens, US Congressman from Pennsylvania and the leading Radical Republican in the House of Representatives, rose to introduce the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution on the floor of the. Stevens, chair of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, was also co-chair of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction set up by Congress, in late 1865, to promote a radical Reconstruction, a program advanced over the consistent objections of President Andrew Johnson.
Here is how Stevens introduced the Amendment:
Congress tasked the committee with reconstructing the nation and setting new constitutional baselines for post-Civil War America; this is difficult work; above all, we are trying to write the Declaration of Independence’s promise of freedom and equality into the Constitution. But I beg gentlemen to consider the magnitude of the task which was imposed upon the committee. They were expected to suggest a plan for rebuilding a shattered nation—a nation which though not dissevered was yet shaken and riven by the gigantic and persistent efforts of six million able and ardent men; of bitter rebels striving through four years of bloody war. It cannot be denied that this terrible struggle sprang from the vicious principles incorporated into the institutions of our country. Our fathers had been compelled to postpone the principles of their great Declaration, and wait for the full establishment till a more propitious time. That time ought to be present now. But the public mind has been educated in error for a century. How difficult in a day to unlearn it. In rebuilding, it is necessary to clear away the rotten and defective portions of the old foundations, and to sink deep and found the repaired edifice upon the firm foundation of eternal justice. If, perchance, the accumulated quicksands render it impossible to reach in every part so firm a basis, then it becomes our duty to drive deep and solid the substituted piles on which to build. It would not be wise to prevent the raising of the structure because some corner of it might be founded upon materials subject to the inevitable laws of mortal decay. It were better to shelter the household and trust to the advancing progress of a higher morality and a purer and more intelligent principle to underpin the defective corner.
The Amendment passed in the House on June 13, by a vote of 138 in favor and 36 opposed, having passed in the Senate five days earlier, on June 8, by a vote of 33 in favor and 11 opposed. In other words, roughly a quarter of US Representatives and Senators, serving in houses of Congress that did not include representatives from the seceded Confederate states, voted against the amendment.
It is tempting to imagine that the establishment of egalitarian citizenship in the aftermath of a bloody Civil War fought in its name proceeded as a matter of course. But it did not. It was bitterly contested, by everyone aligned with the Confederacy, but also by many Northern Democrats, who rallied behind Andrew Johnson’s efforts to quickly reincorporate the eleven defeated Southern states without substantially empowering emancipated formerly enslaved people or enforcing any form of retributive justice. And it is been bitterly contested ever since.
Stevens and his Radical Republican allies in Congress understood the strength of the opposition to their vision of a multi-racial and non-racist democracy, and they fought a decade-long battle on its behalf, centered on both enforceable legal and civic equality and land reform designed to empower formerly-enslaved agricultural laborers. They succeeded in many ways, passing numerous bills designed to support the civil rights and economic opportunities of emancipated Blacks, and securing passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. Yet the gains were short-lived, betrayed by the infamous Compromise of 1877 that placed Republican Rutherford Hayes in the White House and ending the final remnants of the Union’s military occupation of the South, leading in short order to the reinstitution of Black subordination via the new Jim Crow system of racial segregation and extortionate share-cropping. (While there have been many fine histories of this period, to my mind the best is Eric Foner’s award-winning Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877.)
The Fourteenth Amendment was the cornerstone of the effort to truly reconstruct the postwar nation on the foundations of non-racial citizenship. In the words of historian T.J. Stiles, it was “The Constitutional Amendment That Reinvented Freedom”: “It established birthright citizenship, required ‘due process’ and ‘equal protection’ of the law for everyone, and put the federal government in the business of policing liberty. It removed race and ethnicity from the legal definition of American identity.”
Stevens was one of the principal legislative proponents of the Amendment. And, as President Johnson consistently sought to obstruct such efforts, he was one of the ring leaders of the 1868 effort to impeach Johnson. Indeed, he succeeded in this effort—Johnson was famously impeached by the House on February 24, 1868, by a vote of 126-47-- though Johnson was eventually acquitted in the Senate by the narrow margin of 35-19, one short of the 2/3 majority necessary to convict.
As Bruce Levine notes in his terrific 2021 political biography, Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice, Stevens was reviled and calumnied by opponents of Reconstruction, both in his lifetime and long into the 20th century. William A. Dunning, the dean of “Lost Cause” historians, described Stevens in 1907 as “truculent, vindictive, and cynical.” Writing in 1931, James Truslow Adams called Stevens “the most despicable, malevolent and morally deformed character who has ever risen to power in America.” James G, Randall, writing in his influential 1937 The Civil War and Reconstruction, similarly described him as “filled with ‘vindictive ugliness, unfairness, intolerance, and hatefulness,’” a view carried over into the 1969 edition of the book, co-edited with David Donald, the textbook assigned in the Civil War class I took at Queens College in 1976. The most enduring image of Stevens was produced not in a book but in a film, D.W. Griffith’s 1915 “Birth of a Nation,” one of whose chief protagonists, Austin Stoneman—an ugly, club-footed, lecherous hypocrite—was clearly modeled on Stevens.
Woodrow Wilson was only slightly less harsh, writing on “The Reconstruction of the Southern States” in The Atlantic in 1901: “He had no timidity, no scruples about keeping to constitutional lines of policy, no regard or thought for the sensibilities of the minority, — being rough-hewn and without embarrassing sensibilities himself, — an ideal radical for the service of the moment.”
It is true that Stevens seemed to have little timidity, and appears to have been something of a pit bull in his refusal to let the cause of Reconstruction go. It is also true that he had “no scruples about keeping to constitutional lines of policy,” but only in this sense: he sought, with his colleagues, to revolutionize the “constitutional lines of policy” that had already been decimated by a Civil War, and to use the Constitution’s own Article V process to amend the Constitution. Stevens was a constitutional revolutionary—the point of Levine’s brilliant book--and thus “an ideal radical for the service of the moment.”
Like everything about the Constitution, the Fourteenth Amendment was hardly self-enforcing. This was understood by its drafters, which is why they included the language of Section 5: “Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article” (both the Thirteen and the Fifteenth Amendments contain similar language). Every aspect of the Amendment remained hotly contested for a century after its passage. But in the 1960’s, after decades of intense struggle by a civil rights movement that faced daily attacks on life and limb, Congress finally passed two pieces of legislation designed to enforce the 14th and the 15th Amendments—the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Like the above-mentioned amendments, these landmark pieces of legislation faced strong opposition, and did not pass without legislative battle. The first passed in the House by a vote of 290-130 and in the Senate by a vote of 73-27; the second passed the House by a vote of 328-74 and the Senate by a vote of 79-18. And as is well known, the passage of these laws helped to generate a powerful backlash against any form of racial liberalism.
That said, both the basic intent behind the acts, and the federal bureaucracies established to enforce them, became more or less settled features of US law for the past half-century—until now.
To be fair, the Voting Rights Act has been besieged ever since the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision. The Court’s 6-3 decision this week in Louisiana v. Callais further eviscerated the Act.
At the same time, we are currently witnessing a wholesale assault on the 14th Amendment, and the entire legal system established to enforce it, by the Trump administration. The examples are loud and clear: the outright attack on birthright citizenship, which is currently before the Court; the obvious suspension of due process by the DHS-ICE regime of arrest, detention, and deportation that in the past year has swept up well over 500,000 Americans; and the use of the Justice Department—first established in 1870 to oversee the rule of law in the formerly-Confederate states—to threaten and punish “political enemies.”
Perhaps nothing better symbolizes this Trumpist rejection of the 14th Amendment than the second Trump presidency itself. We should not forget that very powerful arguments were advanced, by numerous reputable conservative legal scholars, including J. Michael Luttig, to justify keeping Trump off several state ballots in 2024, on the grounds that his incitement of the January 6, 2021 insurrection violated the 14th Amendment’s Section 3. In spite of these arguments, the Supreme Court ruled against such moves in March 2024, holding that only Congress could attempt such a maneuver. Trump, his candidacy bolstered, went on to win the 2024 election, and then proceeded, on day one of his second term, to pardon or commute the sentences of every one of the over 1200 people who had been convicted of crimes on for their role in the January 6 insurrection.
Under Trump 20.0, even the barest lip service to the notion of equal justice under the law has been abandoned with contempt.
It is a sad irony of history that this is all happening as the nation prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, and that Trump goes about the task of destroying constitutional democracy even as he makes extravagant plans to celebrate “America 250.”
And it is simply sad, and outrageous, that 160 years after Thaddeus Stevens announced the intention “to write the Declaration of Independence’s promise of freedom and equality into the Constitution,” Donald Trump is doing his best to trample on the Declaration, the Constitution, and the very idea of liberal democracy.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump’s Gold Card Is Birth Tourism
The president's true criticism about birth tourism is not that it is occurring—it’s that someone else is profiting from it.
Apr 07, 2026
On April 1, the Supreme Court began hearing arguments in Trump v. Barbara, the class-action lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship.
Trump insists that this ban is necessary to stop birth tourism. This refers to the practice of traveling to another country to give birth, thereby allowing the child to automatically acquire citizenship. Via TruthSocial, Trump writes: “Birthright Citizenship has to do with the babies of slaves, not Chinese Billionaires who have 56 kids, all of whom ‘become’ American Citizens. One of the many Great Scams of our time!”
Solicitor General D. John Sauer has raised similar concerns. He remarks, “Media reported as early as 2015 that, based on Chinese media reports, there are 500—500—birth tourism companies in the People’s Republic of China, whose business is to bring people here to give birth and return to that nation.”
However, despite their criticisms, the Trump administration has effectively launched their own birth tourism venture: the “Trump Gold Card,” a visa program that expedites the process for those “who have demonstrated their ability and desire to advance the interest of the United States” by donating $1 million dollars and paying a $15,000 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) processing fee. The “Trump Corporate Gold Card” requires a $2 million contribution paid by a corporation “or similar entity” on behalf of the individual. There is even a “Trump Platinum Card” reportedly coming soon. That card will require a $5 million contribution and makes the visa holder exempt from paying US taxes on non-US income for 270 days.
Trump is not ending birth tourism. His true goal is to seize control of the market by monopolizing the pathways to legal residency and citizenship.
Once approved, either variant of the Gold Card provides successful applicants with “lawful permanent resident status” as an EB-1 or EB-2 visa holder. (Specific details for the Platinum Card are not yet available, but presumably it would grant recipients permanent resident status as well.)
This is significant because of how it relates to Trump’s birthright ban. The Trump administration alleges that the 14th Amendment only grants citizenship to those who are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US by virtue of owing it “direct and immediate allegiance” and receiving “protection” from it. The children of US citizens and lawful permanent residents meet this standard because their parents have “a permanent domicile.”
Trump’s birthright executive order explicitly carves out this exception: “Nothing in this order shall be construed to affect the entitlement of other individuals, including children of lawful permanent residents, to obtain documentation of their United States citizenship.”
Importantly then, the US-born children of Trump Gold Card recipients will be automatically granted citizenship at birth—this is true regardless of how the Supreme Court rules.
Trump is not ending birth tourism. His true goal is to seize control of the market by monopolizing the pathways to legal residency and citizenship. This is a hostile takeover. While Trump decries the problem of “Chinese billionaires” scamming the US to get citizenship for their children, his Gold Card programs allow them to directly purchase it. After all, who else but a multimillionaire or billionaire could afford the $1 million (or $5 million) price tag? Once they obtain lawful permanent resident status, what stops them from giving birth to “56 kids” in the US?
The “Corporate Gold Card” paves the way for even relatively poorer immigrants to gain permanent residency so long as they have skills that companies desire. Rather than curtailing the birth tourism market, Trump is expanding it!
Moreover, a Gold Card applicant may include their spouse or unmarried children (under 21 years old), thereby ensuring they too “receive all of the privileges conferred” by the program. While each family member is subject to another $15,000 DHS processing fee and a $1 million donation, this is unlikely to be a barrier for the ultra wealthy.
Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick claims, “Our immigration system should put Americans first. That’s exactly why the Trump Gold Card is a major win for our country.” Trump likewise exclaims: “Wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card. They’ll be wealthy, and they’ll be successful, and they’ll be spending a lot of money, and paying a lot of taxes and employing a lot of people.”
The irony is that Trump wants wealthy, successful, and talented people to migrate to the US. He wants this regardless of how much his anti-immigrant base despises it. His criticism about birth tourism is not that it is occurring—it’s that someone else is profiting from it.
Ultimately, the Gold Card is gaudy, illegal Trump-branded birth tourism. If Trump were serious about tackling this issue, he would immediately end his pay-for-stay scheme. But he won’t. He will insist, despite any evidence, that birth tourism is rampant and poses an existential threat to the nation; while, at the same time, getting in on the action himself. This isn’t because Trumpian birth tourism is superior or better for the nation. It’s because it’s better for him. In the end, there is only one citizen that Trump truly cares about: himself.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular