From WNYC, I'm Brian Laird. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Friday, May 29th.

President Trump is trying to make it more difficult for foreigners here legally to stay in the United States. We'll have an

immigration lawyer who can't give personal legal advice per se, but he can't speak generally about

these whole new categories of people here legally who may now have to leave the country. Ironically,

that's leave the country specifically if they want to permanently stay.

This is because a week ago, right before the holiday weekend, so many of you may not have

heard this in the news, the Trump administration announced a change in how green card or

permanent residency applications would be handled for people now here legally in various categories,

like on student visas, work visas, some folks who are married to U.S. citizens,

and others will go down the categories.

In a statement, U.S.C.I.S., the Citizenship and Immigration Service, said,

quote, from now on an alien who is in the U.S.

temporarily and wants a green card must return to their home country to apply, except in

extraordinary circumstances, unquote. Now, needless to say, this is causing alarm for many immigrants

with families and jobs here, hoping for permanent

resident status. I will say there have been indications that the phrase extraordinary circumstances

might apply to more people than it would sound like, but who this policy applies to and what the

impact will be is still to be determined. So for a few

minutes to try and bring more clarity to the change and answer some of your questions, if you're

in one of these situations, we're joined by Alan Wernick, an attorney and senior legal advisor to the

City University of New York's Citizenship Now Project, which is CUNY's free immigration law service program.

Alan Wernick, always good to have you. Welcome back to WNYC. Thanks a lot, Brian. Always happy to be here.

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