Green Card Interviews End in Handcuffs for Spouses of U.S. Citizens
32 comments
·November 27, 2025nxobject
quadrium
It's required to overstay, and for the case of student visas, you must abandon the visa when petitioning to adjust status. The terms of the student visa are that you cannot have immigration intentions.
When this happens, you're present without a visa, but it's not illegal. You're on a "stay authorized by the attorney general".
I'm not sure if that has changed, but the " authorized stay" thing is the defense to being present without a visa.
It does make a lot of paperwork more difficult, like getting a drivers license, when as you can't prove status.
TriangleEdge
This happened to someone I know. He was working on a TN visa, had his green card approved, and was waiting for an interview. He was not allowed to leave the country, but he lost his job, and had to leave the country because of the 60 days grace period of the visa. Because he left, he lost his green card application.
You both:
1. Can't leave the country because of immigration laws.
2. Have to leave the country because of immigration laws.
someperson
A TN visa is explicitly a "non-immigrant visa", there isn't supposed to be a pathway to permanent residency.
It's still possible to through an adjustment of status but the hoops around not leaving the country are much more awkward.
Because permanent immigration is not the intent of a TN visa, it's a loophole.
kaashif
You're phrasing this a bit oddly. There isn't any immigration law saying he cannot leave the country.
There is a law saying that if you leave the country you abandon your green card application.
Combined with losing his visa and having to leave the country, this just means that the law says if you lose your visa, you lose your green card application too.
But you can always legally leave the country forever.
SilverElfin
I remember reading that depending on which country you’re from, the waiting time can be years or even decades. Is that true? If so that’s crazy and cruel.
scheme271
This really depends on your relationship with the other person and your status (e.g. US citizen, permanent resident, etc). Long story short, if you are the spouse or immediate family of an US citizen, there isn't any queue to get permanent resident status aside from whatever time it takes the US government to process the various forms. That time can be substantial, e.g. 2-3 years but it's nothing like the multi-year wait that a spouse of a permanent resident needs to go through just to apply for permanent resident status.
someperson
Country of birth does determine the "priority date" waiting list. Specifically for Philippines, Mexico, India and China. Due to demand. Everyone else is in the rest of the world bucket.
For those countries (especially India) the wait can be more than a decade.
Moving to a points based immigration system without country of birth consideration may one day happen.
Depending on what contributes to points it would encourage better English language abilities and skill sets from immigrants (eg winners being China and India, losers being Mexico)
LorenPechtel
Depends on the visa category. Family preference visas for siblings can have waiting lists in the decades. But family preference visas for spouses of citizens have no wait list. It's just the system is slow. We went through some of it long ago, her time here threw us into proximity, proximity turned to love. That meant an adjustment of status, her old visa became invalid when we applied, but you have permission to stay while such an application is being processed. A hair under 6 months from application to first interview, a hair under two years before she got conditional permanent residency. (And I think that timing was not a coincidence, they stretched it out to just below the point it wouldn't have been conditional.) I would be terrified to do that under the current administration.
JuniperMesos
Only if you think it is crazy and cruel to disallow someone from another country to become a legal resident and then eventually a citizen of the US.
kalkin
In many circumstances - including when that person is married to a US citizen, or when they'll likely be killed on return to their country of birth - it is indeed crazy and cruel.
(In more ordinary circumstances it's merely arbitrary and unjust.)
mock-possum
As ever, the craziness and the cruelty is the point.
Gabriel_Martin
Truly brave feat of public service getting those criminals off the street.
aaronbrethorst
Friendly reminder that it's often not possible to differentiate snark or sarcasm from cruel indifference towards fellow human beings on Hacker News.
bfkwlfkjf
Obviously sarcasm
nrhrjrjrjtntbt
Yeah this is a dont come to USA to set roots advert basically. It is impossible to get PR without prison time.
anon291
While I personally find no objection to these spouses remaining here, I don't see what is really supposed to concern me from a legal perspective. There is no right to residency of migration in general. I do agree we ought to change the law to be make it easier for spouses of citizens, but if you overstay a visa you should expect detention.
However from a moral standpoint I find the infant child separation abhorrent and think that we should generally defer to American citizen spouses as a pretty good indicator that we should show some mercy in enforcement. Moreover, the law should be changed that foreign spouses without criminal records and not taking public benefit ought to be allowed to stay and work honestly. Make it easy.
LorenPechtel
Except it's not an overstay--you're automatically in status while there is an application pending.
filleduchaos
[delayed]
aikinai
As an American with a foreign-spouse who went through the green card application long before Trump, these stories are heart-breaking but also what I expected. I guess these couples and lawyers were just counting on lax enforcement? But this was never allowed.
The article is very light on details, but implies all of these spouses travelled to the US on a visa waiver (or similar) and then applied for a green card. Entering the US on most visas includes the assertion that you have no intent to immigrate. If you happen to already be in the US when you fall in love, get married, and apply to stay, that's when you're allowed to overstay during your pending application.
As far as I can tell from the article, it appears all of these people committed immigration fraud by entering on non-immigrant visas with clear intent to immigrate. Given that they're almost certainly upstanding people who intended to do the right thing, I think they could safely be asked to leave and apply correctly without the forceful detention, but they are technically in the wrong. What they did is specifically something I knew not to do and went through great pains to avoid.
The immigration processes for legitimate foreign spouses are Kafkaesque and absolutely need to be overhauled. It shouldn't be easier to come in illegally than through legitimate marriage. But in the meantime, people also can't circumvent the existing laws and then act flabbergasted when called on it.
I really do feel terrible for these couples caught up in it, especially since it seems their lawyers misled them.
jackjeff
So the right process is to request for a K1 fiancé visa which takes over a year?!
I can see why people were tempted to cut corners, especially given past tolerance…
DrierCycle
Declare independence from the administration.
nrhrjrjrjtntbt
So you saying states should exit the union?
A note that it's easy to "overstay" a visa when waiting for a green card interview - the wait times are often in the 6-16 month range, and if you leave the country you'll be considered to have abandoned your "petition to adjust status". It's a catch-22, and it looks like the only recourse is for an immigration lawyer to file a habeas corpus petition in federal court.