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

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that it will roll out revised editions of two of its most heavily filed forms: Form I-539, Application to Extend/Change Nonimmigrant Status, and Form I-765, Application for Employment Authorization, on September 15, 2026. Unlike previous form updates, this transition comes with a hard cutoff: USCIS says there will be no grace period. In other words, applicants who submit the wrong version on or after that date risk having their filings rejected outright.

The United States has revoked more than 600 visas from foreign nationals in a single month as part of an aggressive new campaign against "birth tourism". The revocation followed the announcement by the State Department to carry out the most concrete enforcement actions yet with the aim to completely sabotage ‘birth tourism’.

President Donald Trump has opened a new front in his administration's long-running effort to reshape U.S. birthright citizenship rules: this time targeting the practice known as birth tourism. On August 6, 2026, the president signed Executive Order 14419, "Ending Birth Tourism," and directed the Departments of State and Homeland Security to crack down on foreign nationals who travel to the U.S. on temporary visas for the purpose of giving birth. The order was published in the Federal Register on August 11, and within a week, the State Department had already stood up a dedicated enforcement task force and began revoking visas.

For over 25 years, the regulations governing America’s J-1 Exchange Visitor Program have barely changed. It remained a relic of a paper-based era that predates SEVIS, the government’s electronic tracking system, by four years. That is now set to change. On last July 30, 2026, the US Department of State published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would rewrite how J-1 programs are terminated, and reinstated. The notice handed the department new discretionary power to end a participant’s status directly. It has also tightened the deadlines for corrections, and, notably, argued for doing away with a grace period. Exchange visitors have long relied on this period to wind down their affairs and leave the country in an orderly way. However, the proposed rule has placed the J-1 into a double jeopardy like never before.

On August 11, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security published an interim final rule that hands the US Citizenship and Immigration Services new authority to make electronic filing mandatory for immigration benefit requests. This would apply to a wide range of cases from green card applications to citizenship petitions and work permits. Moreover, this update will also end the long-standing norm that applicants could almost always choose to file on paper.

For around a decade, the 60-day grace period has quietly functioned as one of the most important safety valves in America's high-skilled immigration system. It is a modest cushion that gives H-1B workers time to find a new job or switch visa status. If nothing else, it is a great window to wind down their lives in the US after a layoff. That cushion may now be about to disappear. On August 6, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security sent a proposed rule titled "Eliminating the Discretionary 60-day Grace Period" (RIN 1615-AD22) to the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for review.

On August 6, 2026, President Trump signed two executive orders reshaping the landscape around citizenship and international travel. One narrows the categories of people eligible for birthright citizenship; the other directs the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security to actively curb what the administration calls "birth tourism". The latter is considered a practice of entering the U.S. on a non-immigrant visa for the primary purpose of giving birth on American soil. The orders followed the Supreme Court's June 2026 ruling in Trump v. Barbara, and senior adviser Stephen Miller described the birth tourism crackdown as one of the administration's most significant immigration actions to date.

Some fights, apparently, don't end just because the Supreme Court says they are over. On Thursday, August 6, President Donald Trump signed two new executive actions targeting birthright citizenship, a mere five weeks after the nation's highest court struck down his first attempt by a 6-3 vote. The first order, reportedly titled "Continuing to Protect the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship," aims once again to limit which U.S.-born children are eligible for automatic citizenship. The second, "Ending Birth Tourism," takes aim at a smaller and more politically manageable target: foreign visitors who travel to the United States specifically to give birth. Trump offered no additional details on implementation but told reporters he believes the new actions will hold up in court.

If you have filed anything with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the past year and felt like it vanished into a void, you are certainly not alone. According to new data compiled by the American Immigration Council, the agency responsible for processing everything from green cards to work permits is now completing fewer cases. Moreover, they are denying more of them, and making people wait dramatically longer for an answer, which, in some categories, is years longer.

On August 5, 2026, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued Policy Alert PA-2026-05. It is a significant update to the USCIS Policy Manual to change the practices of how officers evaluate evidence and issue Requests for Evidence (RFEs) & Notices of Intent to Deny (NOIDs). The change reverses a permissive, requestor-friendly approach that had been in place for years. On the other hand, it restores officers’ full discretion to deny incomplete or legally deficient filings outright.

A coalition of nearly two dozen Democratic-led states, joined separately by a group of civil rights organizations, filed suit this week to stop the Trump administration from handing federal immigration authorities access to the personal records of low-income families enrolled in one of the country's oldest safety-net programs. The legal fight is the latest, and, advocates say, one of the most consequential in a string of battles over the administration's effort to convert data collected by anti-poverty agencies into a tool for immigration enforcement.