A word of warning to all of my clients
I became an immigration lawyer in 1995. For most of my career, USCIS helped immigrants become permanent residents or US citizens. They would give immigrants the benefit of the doubt, usually approving applications where they had discretionary power to approve or deny cases. This was true even for immigrants with a criminal record. That is no longer the case. Since the beginning of 2026, many things have changed, all of them in a negative way for immigrants. There have not been many new laws passed regarding immigration, though. Most of the changes are policy changes, but they are having a huge impact on the results of immigrant applications. Before 2026 I used to tell clients that USCIS was looking for a way to approve their cases. Now, they are looking for a way to deny those same cases. Immigrants no longer get the benefit of the doubt from USCIS. Many more applications for permanent residence are being denied now than ever before.
If you ever applied for a tourist visa or work visa and lied on your application for that visa, you are likely to be denied permanent residence now, even if your visa was approved or that visa application happened many years ago. If you entered the USA and lied to the border officer about your intentions for coming here, that could also be a problem for you.
Waiting times are also going up a lot. Waiting times for naturalization interviews have increased from 4 months to more than a year, and I expect the waiting time to get even longer. Immigrant petitions for family members outside the USA have increased be several months. USCIS has diverted many of their employees from working on pending applications to reviewing old approved cases to check for errors. DACA renewal applications have gone from 1-2 months of waiting to 6-8 months. If you have DACA, apply for your renewal 8 months early to be sure your current work permit doesn’t expire before the replacement arrives. When clients call me to ask for an estimate on how long their case is going to take, I really don’t have a reliable answer for them because waiting times for almost every type of case have been increasing to lengths I have never before seen in my career.
It is a difficult time to apply for any kind of immigration benefit right now. It’s harder and takes longer. But applications are still being approved. The most important thing I can tell anyone who wants to apply for something is to be honest about your immigration history, arrests by the police or border patrol, traffic tickets, illegal entries, previous applications someone filed for you. All of those things are important and they will help me understand what your situation is and what advice to give you about whether to apply or not. These difficult policies will last as long as Donald Trump is president, and they may become more immigrant friendly when the next president arrives. For some applicants, it might be better to wait until the next president arrives because their applications might be more likely to be approved under a new president and a new immigration policy.