Heads up that you are hearing us a day early.

We'll be coming to your feed from now on Tuesdays and Fridays, starting today. You ain't got to do nothing different. Just listen like always. Cool. Cool. What's good, y'all? You're listening to Code Switch from NPR. I'm Gene Demby, and I'm joined today by Hamanna Bustillo. What's good, Hamanah? Hey, Gene. Y'all have heard Haman on the podcast before.

Today, though, we are talking about some huge changes to American immigration policy that will likely affect hundreds of thousands of people who live in the U.S. and people who are not here illegally.

Yeah, you know, if you are an immigrant in the United States or looking to come to the United States, There is, you know, at least one agency that you are most likely to run into.

And that is the U.S. citizenship and immigration services, also known as U.S.

CIS.

And sometimes they call it CIS, but it's not like the forensics side of CIS.

CSA.

So wait, U.S. CIS, they're the people you would have to interface with

to handle your residency in the United States if you were not born here, right? Yes. So they give you

a green card. They are the one that says that you can be a U.S. citizen. They also are what give

people work permits and various visas. And so, you know, if you are looking to be in the United States legally, if you're looking to do that, quote, unquote, right way, USCIS is often the main keeper of that, quote, unquote, right way. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Can I ask you a very dumb question? Is a green card actually green? I think it has some green in it. Just like on the edges. You know, your friend is a little tinted. Green tinted card. Green card is easy to say. So USCIS is the people you'd had to interface with to handle your residency in the United States if you were not born here. Yeah, traditionally. I mean, we are seeing the second Trump administration really change a lot of the focus of

USCIS to be a lot more restrictive.

So the most recent example of this is in May, there was a policy memo giving USCIS officers who are reviewing these applications for legal permanent residency, the discretion that if someone didn't go back to their home country to apply for this green card, that could be a reason to

deny it.

Wow.

The law hasn't changed.

But this policy memo really freaked people out because it sounds like they want to make

it harder for people to be approved for a green card.

Okay.

So they're tightening the screws on people who want to stay in the country via green cards, right?

Yeah, via green cards and via just about anything else.

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