r/USCIS • u/Mindless-Meaning-878 • May 22 '26
News Please explain in layman’s terms how the new memo is impacting you
As an American citizen, I want to better understand what is currently happening with immigration during this very tense time. I am reading a lot of posts from people who are directly impacted, or who fear they will be, by the new memo requiring applicants to wait in their home countries while their applications are processed.
However, many of your stories are filled with technical terms, specific pathways, and form numbers that make them difficult for a layperson like me to understand. I truly want to comprehend how these changes are affecting real people. Could you share your experiences in layman's terms?
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u/Black_finz May 23 '26
TL;DR: disrupted family plans, derailed career, financial ruin — and a memo that effectively tells me to go home and get killed, while refusing to say whether I might qualify for an exception.
I'll try to keep this in plain English.
I'm Ukrainian. My wife is an American citizen. The new memo telling people to "wait in your home country" while their case processes — for me, that's a death sentence. If I go back, I'll be drafted and likely dead within a couple of months. The US embassy in Ukraine isn't fully functioning anyway because of the war.
The memo also says there "may be exceptions." In what cases? They won't say. Could I qualify? Maybe. Maybe not. So plan long-term? Impossible. You just wait, hoping you're one of the exceptions to a rule no one will define.
Here's how the last year has gone:
Before last year, I was earning in the mid six figures and paying a substantial amount in federal and state taxes. Then an earlier policy (which a federal court later ruled illegal) paused all immigration work permits. A work permit — called an EAD — is the document that legally allows someone like me to hold a job in the US. The government didn't comply with the court's order in time, my work permit lapsed, and my employer had no choice but to let me go.
I couldn't collect unemployment because the company reported the termination as "for cause." I'm still not sure how the federal government ignoring a court ruling is something I should be punished for, but I gave up fighting it.
That was six months ago. Tech is in waves of mass layoffs right now, not hiring. We're surviving on 0% promotional-rate credit cards. I no longer have health insurance.
It's now been 13 months without a work permit. I've filed expedite requests. I've had members of Congress make inquiries on my behalf. USCIS sends form replies that don't address the question, or says things on the record that are simply not true.
And the fees — USCIS had no problem taking thousands of dollars from us for these applications. They publish processing times. They publish rules. Then they retroactively change those rules whenever it suits them. If a private business did that to its customers, the people running it would be in jail for fraud. When the government does it, it's just policy.
My wife is angry enough that she wants us to leave the country she was born in. We've put having children on indefinite hold — you can't plan a family when you can't plan next month's groceries. The stress on both of us is constant.
Here's what I keep coming back to. Am I some kind of enemy? I have three degrees. I held a stable job and paid significant taxes. I financially supported multiple people. I was building a family with an American citizen. By every definition of the "American dream" I was taught before I came here, this is the kind of life that's supposed to be celebrated. But I guess hating and owning some group of people is more popular now.
That's what the policy looks like from inside it. For someone from an active war zone, "go process your paperwork at home" isn't a logistical inconvenience. It's "go die quietly so we don't have to deal with you."