USCIS Adjustment Memo PM-602-0199, Explained

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on May 21 issued the most consequential rewrite of how the agency approaches adjustment of status in a generation — without changing a single line of the underlying statute.

Policy Memorandum PM-602-0199, titled Adjustment of Status and Discretion, directs USCIS officers to treat the path to a green card from inside the United States as “extraordinary” relief. The memo instructs adjudicators to consider whether a more “ordinary” path — consular processing of an immigrant visa from outside the country — would be the more appropriate route, and to weigh a long list of “negative factors” against the applicant’s case.

The change is not statutory. Section 245 of the Immigration and Nationality Act still exists. The eligibility criteria still exist. What has changed is the agency’s posture in exercising the discretion that statute commits to it.

USCIS, in its announcement, framed the memo as a reminder rather than a new rule.

The memo instructs officers, in adjudicating I-485 applications, to weigh on a case-by-case basis:

• Prior immigration violations, including overstays of authorized periods of admission and unauthorized employment.
• Compliance with the conditions of the visa or parole under which the applicant entered the United States.
• Fraud or misrepresentation at any stage — entry, status change, or adjustment.
• Conduct inconsistent with the applicant’s stated purpose of entry — for example, entering on a visit visa and quickly marrying a U.S. citizen, or changing from a visit visa to a student visa to an employment-based green-card filing.
• Moral character and overall equities, including family ties to U.S. citizens and humanitarian factors.

Officers are told that an applicant who could reasonably be expected to obtain an immigrant visa through consular processing should generally be expected to do so — even where the statute makes adjustment available.

The memo does not, on its face, rescind any USCIS Policy Manual provision in Volume 7, Part B, which governs section 245(a) adjustment. It layers a new discretionary posture on top.

Three categories of applicant are likely to feel the memo’s bite first:

(1) Applicants who changed status after entry on a visit visa

The memo singles out “conduct inconsistent with the stated purpose of entry.” Practitioners read that as a direct shot at the common pattern of arriving on a B-1/B-2 visit visa, then changing to F-1 or another nonimmigrant status, and ultimately filing for adjustment from an employment- or family-based petition.

That sequence is lawful — each step is permissible under separate INA provisions — but it is now flagged for heightened scrutiny.

(2) K-1 fiancé(e) and K-2 derivatives

By statute, a K-1 entrant who marries the petitioner within 90 days of admission is required to adjust status from within the United States. INA § 245(d) restricts K nonimmigrants to adjustment based on the qualifying marriage. There is no consular-processing alternative for them after entry. Despite that, attorneys report that K-1-based adjustment filings have slowed since the memo’s release as officers apply the new discretionary posture.

(3) Employment-based applicants from EB-1, EB-2, and EB-3 categories

The memo affects employment-based green-card filers too. Workers with an approved I-140 petition who hold valid nonimmigrant status — H-1B, L-1, O-1 — have historically adjusted from within the U.S. as a matter of course. The new framework invites officers to ask whether consular processing abroad would be the more “regular” path, even when the worker is in lawful status and meets every statutory requirement.

The on-the-ground effect, attorneys say, is that I-485 cases that would have been approvable on paper a year ago are now being treated as marginal discretionary calls.

The legal challenge being prepared against PM-602-0199 will turn on a familiar Administrative Procedure Act argument: an agency cannot use a discretionary framework to nullify a statutory benefit Congress made available.

INA § 245(a) authorizes the Attorney General — and by delegation, USCIS — to adjust the status of an alien who has been “inspected and admitted or paroled into the United States.” Discretion is part of the statute. But courts have long held that agencies must exercise discretion in a manner consistent with the statutory scheme, and that systemic policies that effectively rewrite eligibility are reviewable.

Several Supreme Court decisions inform that analysis — most notably the Court’s continued willingness, post-Trump v. CASA, to permit nationwide vacatur of agency rules under APA § 706. The Rhode Island district court did exactly that on June 5 in Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island v. USCIS, vacating four other USCIS adjudication-pause policies tied to the December 2025 country-based restrictions.

A separate lawsuit specifically targeting PM-602-0199 is being prepared for filing in the coming weeks, according to multiple practitioners involved in the underlying litigation.

The “this one” Hacking referenced is the second lawsuit his firm is filing against the December 2025 pauses — a parallel action to the Rhode Island case. The AOS-memo challenge is queued behind it.

Several themes are emerging from how the immigration bar is advising clients in the weeks since the memo:

• Adjust now if you are eligible. Cases filed before the memo’s full operational effect may benefit from the prior framework if litigation succeeds in halting the new policy.
• Build the discretionary record. Officers are now weighing equities. Documented community ties, family relationships, tax compliance, employment history, and absence of any immigration violation matter more than before.
• Prepare for interviews. USCIS practice has effectively returned to routine in-person adjudication of I-485 cases, including employment-based ones that had been adjudicated on paper.
• Consider whether to join coordinated litigation. Class and organizational plaintiffs in APA challenges can produce relief that individual mandamus actions cannot.

The memo does not bar adjustment of status. It does not amend the statute Congress wrote. It does, in practical effect, shift the burden of proof from the agency to the applicant — and in the discretionary frame the memo prescribes, that shift can be decisive.