Insights & Updates on EB-1A Green Card and U.S. Immigration

The Trump administration is preparing to cancel the business and tourism visas of as many as 200,000 foreigners who have applied for, or are currently seeking, asylum in the United States. Several news outlets and officials say it would become the largest single mass revocation of visas in American history.

Just one day after the Trump administration proposed a new $103,265 fee on H-1B petitions, the State Department dropped an even more consequential bombshell on the global visa system. It paused every immigrant visa appointment at every U.S. embassy and consulate worldwide. The move, confirmed by Reuters on Tuesday, August 25, and reported across 28 news outlets, has left immigrant visa applicants with cancelled interviews and no confirmed date for when they will get a new one. And, these include people who had already cleared years of paperwork and were often just weeks from finally reuniting with family or starting a new life in the U.S.

The Trump administration has taken its second run at imposing a new six-figure fee on the H-1B skilled-worker visa program. A proposed regulation released on Monday, August 24, aims to codify a new $103,265 charge on new H-1B petitions. This would be the second attempt of the administration to impose an H-1B fee, after a federal court struck down its first attempt in June. The move, reported by Reuters and confirmed across multiple outlets, marks the latest escalation in an already contentious fight over the future cost of hiring foreign skilled workers in the United States.

A federal judge in Manhattan has vacated one of the Trump administration's most ruthless immigration policies of the year, known to order a blanket suspension on immigrant visa processing for people from 75 countries. Against the policy, the federal court ruled that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had no legal authority to impose it.

The U.S. Department of State has released its Visa Bulletin for September 2026, the final bulletin of fiscal year 2026. For Indian green card applicants in particular, it brings more of the same uneasy holding pattern that has defined much of the past two months. Like the last few times, there is no forward movement in the categories that matter most and continued unavailability in one of the largest employment-based lanes. Moreover, now, there is also a standing warning that things could still get worse before the fiscal year closes on September 30.

A bipartisan pair of U.S. lawmakers has introduced legislation that could, for the first time, bring a fast-track option to one of the most notorious bottlenecks in the American employment-based green card system: the Department of Labor's PERM labor certification process. Congressmen Lou Correa (D-CA) and Glenn Grothman (R-WI) introduced the PERM Backlog Reduction Act on August 13, 2026. They have proposed an optional premium processing program that would let employers pay a fee to get a 30-day decision on Form ETA-9089, the Permanent Employment Certification Form at the heart of the PERM system.

New data drawn from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) figures show a sharp decline in green card approvals over the past year. Moreover, the Indian applicants are absorbing a disproportionate share of the slowdown. The numbers, compiled and analyzed by immigration research groups including Boundless Immigration and the Cato Institute, paint a picture of an approval system that has tightened considerably since the current administration took office. This is in clear disparity with the overall demand for green cards from Indian nationals, which, on the other hand, continued to climb.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced it will publish a revised edition of Form I-485, Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status, on September 18, 2026. This is the form used by hundreds of thousands of green card applicants each year to adjust their status inside the United States. The new edition carries the date "09/18/26" and replaces the current 01/20/25 edition. As with several other form transitions USCIS has pushed through this year, there is no grace period: applicants who submit the wrong version on or after September 18 risk outright rejection.

Two unconnected cases surfaced in American headlines within days of each other in August 2026, and together they have unsettled a question many lawful permanent residents assumed was long settled: does a green card actually protect you from immigration detention? There are two cases that seem to answer in the negative. A New Delhi-born jazz guitarist was handcuffed after a domestic flight landed in Los Angeles. A North Carolina special-education teacher and grandmother of two U.S. citizen grandchildren was detained the moment she showed up for what should have been a routine check-in. Neither had a criminal conviction driving their case. Both had, on paper, permanent legal status in the United States.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has issued extensive new policy guidance explaining exactly how the agency will decide whether a green card applicant is likely to become a "public charge". It is one of the most consequential and closely watched inadmissibility grounds in U.S. immigration law. The guidance, released on August 18, 2026, as Policy Alert PA-2026-09 and folded into Volume 8, Part G of the USCIS Policy Manual, implements a Department of Homeland Security final rule that rescinds the Biden-era 2022 public charge regulations. It takes effect September 18, 2026, and will apply to applications to register permanent residence or adjust status (Form I-485) postmarked or electronically submitted on or after that date.

Previously, immigrants with pending green card applications treated Advance Parole as a reasonably safe way to travel abroad and come back. That assumption no longer holds. A new ruling from the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) has stripped away a protection that families, DACA recipients, and adjustment-of-status applicants relied on since 2012. It could now mean walking straight into a three- or ten-year bar on returning to the United States.