The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) permits the change of an individual’s immigration status while in the United States from nonimmigrant or parolee (temporary) to immigrant (permanent) if the individual was inspected and admitted or paroled into the United States and is able to meet all required qualifications for a green card (permanent residence) in a particular category. The common term for a change to permanent status is “adjustment of status”.
The INA provides an individual two primary paths to permanent resident status. Adjustment of status is the process by which an eligible individual already in the United States can get permanent resident status (a green card) without having to return to their home country to complete visa processing.
Consular processing is an alternate process for an individual outside the United States (or who is in the United States but is ineligible to adjust status) to obtain a visa abroad and enter the United States as a permanent resident). This pathway is referred to as consular processing.
This article situates PM-602-0199 within the chronological sequence of discretionary tightening that produced it, examines what the memorandum actually directs, surveys the precursor litigation that has already yielded preliminary injunctions, and assesses the legal theories likely to govern the inevitable challenge.
This third article in the series takes a step back and looks at the memorandum itself. Specifically, it walks the memorandum’s text, distinguishes what the memorandum decides from what it does not, and identifies a recurring tendency in the practitioner commentary to attribute to the memorandum operational propositions that the memorandum’s text does not contain.
This article walks through the statutory architecture of section 209, explains why asylee adjustment under § 209(b) sits within the memorandum’s textual reach while refugee adjustment under § 209(a) does not, and identifies a fundamental incoherence in the memorandum’s “consular processing default” framing as applied to the asylee population.
This article describes the pattern of questioning that has begun to emerge, examines the legal architecture against which each question must be read, and sets out a structured approach to client preparation and to the affirmative interview record.
