Brian Lera on WNYC.

Now for the latest way that 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.

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