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Green Card freeze unlawful: Indian-origin US judge on Trump's 75-country order

An Indian-origin US federal judge has ruled that the Donald Trump administration's policy of freezing Green Card processing for applicants from 75 countries is unlawful, while holding that the State Department exceeded its legal authority by taking away visa decision-making powers from designated consular officers. This comes even as the US Labor Department is also planning changes that could increase the cost of sponsoring foreign workers for H-1B work visa visas and employment-based Green Cards . The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), meanwhile, which was passed in 1952, governs visas, Green Cards, citizenship, deportation proceedings, and the grounds on which foreign nationals may be denied entry or permanent residence. He wrote that the January policy freezing Green Card processing for applicants from 75 countries, gave US State Secretary Marco Rubio the power to control individual visa decisions, despite the fact that the INA Act had restricted that responsibility to consular officers who are required to evaluate each Green Card application on its own merits. Bloomberg Law reported that the ruling came in a lawsuit filed by a Brazilian national, whose Green Card Application under the EB-5 immigrant investor visa programme was put on hold because of the policy. Justice Mehta agreed, saying the policy wrongly took away consular officers' authority to independently decide visa applications by effectively deciding outcomes in advance. He also ruled that the case could be reviewed by the court because it challenged a broader State Department policy, not just an individual visa decision. As part of his order, Mehta barred the State Department from applying the public charge policy to the plantiff's application and directed officials to adjudicate his immigrant visa once a consular officer determines that the application is complete. The decision is the latest legal challenge to the administration’s immigration policies. The rules allow US immigration authorities to deny certain visa or Green Card applications if they determine an applicant is likely to rely heavily on government benefits, reflecting the administration’s broader push for stricter immigration screening.