USCIS Policy Updates

You finished your degree, your Optional Practical Training was approved, and you are working for a U.S. employer who wants to keep you. Under the rules that have governed F-1 students for more than forty years, the clock in your passport did not really tick — your Form I-94 said “D/S,” and as long as you kept studying or working within the terms of your status, no fixed date hung over you. A 2026 rule would change that, but a federal court has put it on hold. The Department of Homeland Security has adopted a rule that replaces “duration of status” with a fixed admission date. If it takes effect, then for the students and recent graduates we most often meet — those on OPT or STEM OPT, and the employers who hire them — the shift is not a technicality. It changes when you fall out of status, when unlawful presence starts, and how far ahead you have to plan.

This article explains where the rule stands, what it would change, and the specific steps that F-1 students, OPT and STEM OPT workers, their employers, and students in more difficult situations should be thinking about now.

First, what has actually happened — and what has not

It is worth being precise here, because a lot of the coverage is not. DHS published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on August 28, 2025, proposing to end duration of status for F (academic students), J (exchange visitors), and I (foreign media) nonimmigrants. The public comment period closed on September 29, 2025. DHS then published the final rule on July 17, 2026 (91 FR 44976), with an effective date of September 15, 2026.

The rule is not in effect. On September 14, 2026, one day before the effective date, a federal court in Massachusetts postponed that date nationwide while a challenge to the rule proceeds (Presidents’ Alliance v. DHS, No. 26-cv-13799 (D. Mass.)). As of October 23, 2026, the postponement still stands. The government filed a notice of appeal on September 30, 2026 (First Circuit No. 26-2112); in the district court the case has moved to summary-judgment briefing (motions due October 30, 2026, replies by November 2), and no request to stay the postponement appears on the district court docket. Until that changes, F-1 students are still admitted for duration of status under the older rule, with 60 days after finishing a program or practical training to prepare to leave or transfer (8 CFR 214.2(f)(5), as in force before the rule). The online eCFR already displays the postponed text as “current,” so do not rely on that version for this point.

The rule’s future is less certain than it was in July. But it is published and complete, and it could take effect quickly if the court’s order is lifted. So everything below describes the final rule: what it will change if and when it takes effect. If you are an F-1 student or you employ one, plan around it rather than wait to be surprised by it.

How duration of status works today

Most nonimmigrants are admitted until a specific date. A visitor gets six months; an H-1B worker gets the dates on the approval notice. Those dates print on the Form I-94 admission record, which is the document that actually controls how long you may stay — not the visa stamp in your passport.

F-1 students have been the exception. Since 1978, students have been admitted for “duration of status,” or D/S. Instead of a date, the I-94 simply reads “D/S.” You maintain status by staying enrolled full-time, keeping your Form I-20 valid, and following the rules — full course load, timely program extensions through your Designated School Official, authorized employment only. There is no annual check-in with the government and no fixed date by which you must act. That flexibility is exactly what has let students move from a bachelor’s to a master’s, change majors, transfer schools, or move into practical training without re-applying for a new period of stay each time.

DHS’s core complaint is that D/S gives immigration officers few built-in moments to verify that a student is still doing what the visa allows, and that a small number of people have used open-ended status to remain in the country far longer than a temporary program should require. The final rule’s fix is to give F-1 status an end date.

The new framework: a fixed period of admission

Under the final rule, once it takes effect, an F-1 student would no longer be admitted for D/S. Instead, you would be admitted for a fixed period: the time needed to complete the program listed on your Form I-20, capped at four years, plus 30 days after your program ends. Your I-94 would carry a real “admit until” date, the same as almost every other nonimmigrant.

If your program runs longer than the authorized period — a common situation for PhD candidates, students who change levels, and anyone whose research or training extends past the original end date — you would have to file an application to extend your stay directly with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Form I-539, with a fee and biometrics, before your admission period runs out. This is the single biggest structural change: what your DSO used to handle inside SEVIS with a program extension now becomes a formal benefit application to USCIS, with USCIS processing times, USCIS discretion, and the risk of a Request for Evidence or a denial.

The final rule also tightens several related rules that will matter to specific students:

• The grace period shrinks from 60 days to 30 days. After you complete your program or your authorized post-completion practical training, you would have 30 days — not 60 — to depart or to take steps to stay in status, such as filing an extension or a change of status. You may file an extension during those 30 days, but you may not work or train while it is pending. That is half the runway families have counted on, and it is easy to burn through while waiting on a decision. Students already here in D/S status when the rule takes effect keep a 60-day period under the transition rule, described below.
• Transfers and changes of study are restricted. Below the graduate level, an F-1 student generally could not transfer schools or change majors or educational level during the first academic year of a program. At the graduate level, a student could not change educational objective at any point, and could not transfer at any point either. In extenuating circumstances, such as a school closing, SEVP can allow an exception to the transfer limits. DHS kept the option to delay these limits until September 14, 2028.
• You can move up, not sideways or down. Once you finish a program in F-1 status after the rule’s start date, you could begin a new F-1 program only at a higher educational level. A new program at the same or a lower level would not qualify for F-1 status.
• Delays are not a guaranteed extension. A delay in finishing by your I-20 end date — including one caused by academic probation, suspension, or repeatedly not completing coursework — generally would not be an acceptable reason for an extension. That is a meaningful trap for students who hit academic trouble.

The change that matters most: unlawful presence starts on its own

This is the provision practitioners are most worried about, and it is the one to understand even if you skip everything else.

Under current policy, because an F-1 student is admitted for D/S with no date on the I-94, “unlawful presence” — the specific clock that triggers the three- and ten-year bars to re-entry under INA § 212(a)(9)(B) — generally does not begin to run until USCIS or an immigration judge makes a formal finding that you violated your status. In practice, that has given students who slipped out of status a margin: the bars usually were not accruing silently in the background.

The final rule would remove that margin once it takes effect. Once you are admitted to a date-certain, the day after that date passes without an approved extension or change of status, you are an overstay — and unlawful presence begins to accrue automatically, the same way it does for a visitor or a worker who blows past their I-94 date. Reach 180 days of unlawful presence and depart, and you face a three-year bar. Reach one year and depart, and it is a ten-year bar. No one has to catch you first. The date does the work.

There is an important piece of protection built into the system, and it is the reason timing becomes everything: if you file your extension of stay on time, before your admission period expires, you are generally in a period of authorized stay while the application is pending, and unlawful presence does not accrue during that time even if your original I-94 date passes. File late, and you lose that shelter. Under a fixed-date regime, “file early” stops being good advice and becomes the whole ballgame.

OPT and STEM OPT: the group most exposed

Most of the F-1 students we work with, we meet at the end — at graduation, when practical training is approved and an employer wants to bring them on. Post-completion OPT gives up to 12 months of work authorization; the STEM extension adds another 24 months. Helping a graduate move from OPT into STEM OPT, and then into a longer-term work visa or a green card, is bread-and-butter work in our practice. The final rule, if it takes effect, lands directly on this group.

Here is the problem. OPT and STEM OPT are benefits tied to F-1 status, and your work authorization can run past your fixed admission date. Today, D/S stretches to cover your authorized practical training. Under the final rule, your admission would end 30 days after the program end date on your I-20, so post-completion OPT would generally take more than a work permit. You would file the OPT work-permit application (Form I-765) and also either an extension of stay or, after travel abroad, a new admission through CBP (8 CFR 214.2(f)(10)(ii)(D) in the final rule). STEM OPT that would run past your “admit until” date needs that time granted too. Miss the extension, and your status — and the work authorization that depends on it — is in jeopardy even though your EAD card still shows a later date. Students already here when the rule takes effect get a transition break on OPT, described below.

And here is the trap that is easy to miss, because it does not work the way the H-1B world works. When an H-1B worker’s employer files a timely extension, the worker keeps working for up to 240 days while it is pending. The final rule does not give F-1 students an equivalent automatic 240-day work extension for OPT. The automatic extension it does offer while a timely extension of stay is pending covers only on-campus employment, curricular practical training, and severe-economic-hardship employment — not OPT or STEM OPT. And an extension filed during the 30 days after your program ends carries no work authorization at all while it is pending. In plain terms: filing your extension on time protects your status and stops unlawful presence from accruing, but it may not keep your OPT paycheck flowing while USCIS adjudicates. That gap between “still in status” and “still authorized to work” is exactly where people get hurt, and it is the first thing we would screen for.

What employers need to plan for

Most of our student matters actually start with an employer. A company hires a graduate on OPT, wants to keep them, and comes to us to build the bridge — STEM OPT, then an H-1B or another work category, and often a permanent residence strategy after that. If you employ F-1 workers, the final rule, once in effect, would add a new dependency you did not have before.

Under D/S, your OPT and STEM OPT employees carried their own status quietly in the background. Under a fixed-date regime, any of them whose admission period expires mid-employment now depends on a USCIS extension of stay being filed on time and adjudicated — a process with real processing times and real denial risk. The practical steps for employers are straightforward but need to start now: know each F-1 employee’s admission “admit until” date, not just their EAD expiration; calendar the extension-of-stay deadline months ahead; and get the longer-term visa or green-card strategy moving earlier than you used to, because the buffer that D/S provided is gone. The H-1B cap-gap timing and OPT end dates become something to manage deliberately, not assume.

Students in more difficult situations: the enforcement edge

The rule’s automatic-unlawful-presence provision falls hardest on students who are already in a fragile spot, and these are people we do see.

We help students who need to file for asylum, and students who run into trouble and drop out of school. Under the current D/S framework, a student who stopped attending did not necessarily start accruing unlawful presence until there was a formal finding. Under the final rule, once it takes effect, a fixed admission date means the clock can start on its own — and a student who has left school, lost status, and taken no action can accrue the unlawful presence that triggers the reentry bars without ever receiving a notice. For someone with a pending asylum claim, the interaction between a lapsed F-1 admission date and the asylum timeline needs to be thought through carefully, not left to chance.

It is also worth being candid: students who fall out of status are squarely within current immigration-enforcement priorities. That raises the stakes on every one of the timing questions above. If you are a student whose enrollment has lapsed, or who is weighing an asylum filing, this rule is a reason to get advice sooner rather than later — while options like a change of status, reinstatement, or another form of relief are still on the table.

Current students versus incoming students

The rule draws a line between students already here and those admitted after it takes effect. Under its transition rule, a student admitted for D/S who is properly maintaining F-1 status on the day the rule takes effect may stay until the later of the program end date on the Form I-20 or the expiration date on the work permit (EAD), for no more than four years, plus 60 days. The rule’s text sets that outer limit at November 14, 2030, because it was written for a September 15, 2026 start (8 CFR 214.1(m)(1) in the final rule). A student in that group who needs more time, or wants to start a new program, would file an extension of stay with USCIS. There is one break for recent graduates: a transition student who files for post-completion OPT or STEM OPT by March 18, 2027 does not also need an extension of stay for that training period. Students admitted after the rule takes effect enter the fixed-date system from day one. If the court’s order is lifted and the rule takes effect later than planned, watch for DHS to say how these dates apply.

What to do now

Nothing has to be filed under the new rule while it is on hold, but you can get ahead of it. A few things are worth doing whether or not it takes effect.

Know your dates. Find out what your program end date is on your I-20 and understand that, once the rule is effective, a real “admit until” date will govern your stay. If you are on OPT or STEM OPT, know how your EAD dates line up against that admission period — the mismatch is where the risk lives. If you employ F-1 workers, build that same calendar for every one of them.

Do not travel casually once you have an extension or change of status pending. Departing the United States while a Form I-539 change-of-status application is pending is treated as abandoning it, and travel while an extension is pending carries its own risks. Under a system where a single missed date starts the unlawful-presence clock, an ill-timed trip abroad can be expensive. Even a weekend in Canada is a trip abroad for this purpose; see the risks of a short Canada trip for students and visitors.

Above all, file early and get advice before you are up against a deadline. The protection this system offers — no unlawful presence while a timely-filed extension is pending — only works if the application goes in before your admission period ends. The students who will have the hardest time are the ones who wait until something has already gone wrong. If your situation is at all complicated — a program running long, an academic problem, a pending asylum claim, a lapse in enrollment, or an OPT window that will outlast your admission date — that is worth a conversation now, while the options are widest.

We work with students, recent graduates on OPT and STEM OPT, and the employers who hire them across Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, and Colorado. If the end of duration of status affects you or someone on your team, contact our office and we will help you map the timing before it maps you.

Related on this topic: F-1 & OPT overview and changing to F-1 status.

USCIS Discretion Memo: A Practical Plan If Your Green Card Case Is Already in Progress

Your green card application was ready to file. The evidence was gathered, the forms were complete, the consultation was done. And then, on May 21, 2026, USCIS issued Policy Memorandum PM-602-0199. The next day, the agency’s press release announced that adjustment of status would be granted “only in extraordinary circumstances.” If you are reading this, you are probably wondering whether to file now, hold the case, or start over.

This article is for you. It is not an attempt to convince you the new policy is right or wrong; reasonable lawyers disagree about that and the courts will sort it out in due course. It is a practical plan for handling a case that was already prepared when the memo dropped, written from the perspective of a firm that had several such cases on its desk that week. The plan has two phases: file an appropriately responsive package now to get the clock running on your interview, and use the months before that interview to build the strongest possible record of the discretionary equities the memo asks the officer to weigh. The point of this article is to help you understand both phases and the role your own self-assessment plays in them.

Update, October 2026. Two developments since this article was written. First, on August 5, 2026, USCIS changed its evidence policy (Policy Alert PA-2026-05): when an application arrives without all the initial evidence the regulations and form instructions require, officers may now deny it without first sending a request for evidence or a notice of intent to deny, and the policy applies to cases already pending. The plan below assumes a complete filing — every required form and document — with only the discretionary equities built out afterward; it does not mean filing with required evidence missing. In our experience so far, the policy is aimed at filings that are deficient on their face — for example, an application filed before the applicant was eligible — and we have not seen a discretionary denial issued on the papers before an interview. Second, PM-602-0199 and the August 5 evidence policy are now being challenged in federal court (American Association of University Professors v. Mullin, No. 1:26-cv-14527 (D. Mass., filed Oct. 5, 2026)).

What changed on May 21, 2026 — and what didn’t

PM-602-0199 is an internal USCIS policy memorandum. It is guidance to the agency’s adjudicating officers about how to exercise discretion when deciding adjustment of status applications — the path most people inside the United States use to obtain a green card. The memo tells officers that adjustment of status is a discretionary benefit, not an automatic outcome, and that officers should weigh both positive and negative factors in every case.

What the memo did not do is just as important. It did not amend the Immigration and Nationality Act. It did not eliminate any green card category. It did not change the statutory exemptions Congress wrote for the spouses and parents of U.S. citizens. It did not displace decades of Board of Immigration Appeals decisions — most importantly Matter of Arai, 13 I&N Dec. 494 (BIA 1970) — that have governed how discretion is exercised in adjustment cases for more than fifty years. The framework collected in the agency’s own Policy Manual at 7 USCIS-PM A.10 still controls. What changed is the emphasis: officers are now being told to apply the discretionary inquiry as a live, dispositive question in every case, not as a formality.

The press release used the phrase “only in extraordinary circumstances.” That phrase does not appear in the operative text of the memo itself. The memo directs case-by-case discretionary weighing, which is meaningfully different from a categorical bar. The gap between the public framing and the actual instruction is, in our reading, one of the most important practical facts about this development — and it is the gap that makes the response below possible.
For the full picture of how a green card case works from filing to interview, start with our adjustment of status guide.

That expansion of discretion has now reached public charge as well — our article on the public charge rule taking effect September 18 explains what changed.

Why this matters more if your case was already prepared

If you had not yet started a green card case, you have time to build a complete, equities-forward filing from scratch. If your case was already prepared, you face a different problem: the package you spent months assembling responded to the legal landscape that existed before May 21, and now needs to respond to a landscape that did not exist when the work was done. You have two competing pressures.

On one hand, delay has a real cost. The wait for an in-person adjustment interview at the USCIS Helena field office was about four to five months from filing when this article was written in June 2026. (Processing times are a snapshot; they change constantly, and we do not update articles to track them — before making decisions, check the current time for your form and office at egov.uscis.gov/processing-times.) Every week the case sits on your desk is a week added to the back end. For applicants in valid nonimmigrant status, that delay may be tolerable. For applicants whose status is about to lapse, who need work authorization documents to keep their jobs, or who have time-sensitive personal circumstances, it can be acutely expensive.

On the other hand, filing without addressing the new memo is unwise. Even a strong case looks unprepared if it does not acknowledge the discretionary framework the officer has been told to apply. Adding an entire equities-development effort to an already-prepared case before filing can take months, and meanwhile the interview clock is not running.

This weighs especially on former exchange visitors who overstayed, whose time out of status now draws harder discretionary scrutiny.

The two-phase plan

Phase 1 — At filing: a defensible response, not a perfect one

The goal at filing is not to win the case. The goal at filing is to (a) get the interview clock started, and (b) make sure the file does not look as if it ignored the memo. Three things accomplish this, and they can be done in the time it takes to finish preparing a case that was already nearly ready.

• A cover letter that names the memo and the framework. Your attorney addresses PM-602-0199 directly in the cover letter, names the still-controlling authorities (the statute, Matter of Arai, and the Policy Manual framework), and identifies the affirmative equities that justify a favorable exercise of discretion in your specific case. This belongs in the attorney’s voice, not yours.
• Your own declaration, updated to speak to the discretionary framework. If your case is a marriage case, your declaration should center the bona fides of the relationship and the hardship to your U.S.-citizen family members from the alternative of consular processing. If your case is an employment-based case, it should speak to the lawful pathway Congress created and the years of compliant work that brought you to this point.
• A supporting letter from your U.S. citizen spouse or your U.S. employer. In a marriage case, a brief letter from your U.S.-citizen spouse describing the relationship and the hardship of separation. In an employment case, a letter from the petitioning employer describing the specific cost to the business of losing your services for the duration of consular processing. The employer letter, in particular, is often the strongest single piece of evidence in an EB filing.

None of these takes long when the rest of the case is already prepared. None of them turns an ordinary filing into an exceptional one. They do something more modest and more important: they make sure that when the officer opens your file, the file already speaks the language the officer has been told to listen for.

Phase 2 — Before the interview: build the equities case

The serious equities work happens between filing and the interview. You will typically have several months. That is enough time to gather the documentation, draft the supporting letters, organize the photographic and financial evidence, and prepare both you and your spouse (or you and your employer) to speak to the discretionary factors at the interview. By the time you walk into Helena, the officer will already have read the package you filed and will be looking for the specifics. The interview is where the affirmative equities case is actually made.

Two-phase thinking matters because it inverts the natural anxiety. The natural reflex when something changes is to delay everything and rebuild the whole package. The better move, in our view, is to file what you have with the minimum responsive additions, get the clock started, and then use the time you would have lost to delay to build a much stronger case for the moment when it actually counts: the interview.

Self-assessing your equities: the checklist

The 7 USCIS-PM A.10 framework groups discretionary factors into four categories. You can self-assess your case against each category before your next conversation with your attorney. None of this is legal advice — it is fact-gathering. The point is to walk into the conversation with a clear list of what is in your favor, what is against you, and what documentary evidence exists for each.

Category 1: Family and community ties

• U.S.-citizen or lawful permanent resident spouse, children, or parents — list each by name, relationship, and status.
• Length of your lawful residence in the United States (years, with status held at each point).
• Hardship to your U.S. family if you were required to depart — be concrete (medical, financial, caregiving, country conditions if applicable).
• Ties to a specific community — church, school, neighborhood, volunteer organizations.

Category 2: Immigration history and status compliance

• Every status you have held in the U.S., with start and end dates, including any periods out of status.
• Any periods of work without authorization, even brief.
• Any prior denied or withdrawn immigration application, any visa refusal, any prior removal order — executed or unexecuted.
• Any prior fraud or false-statement issue, no matter how minor it seemed at the time.

Category 3: Work, skills, and economic contribution

• Employment history in the U.S. — employer, role, dates, and whether any unauthorized periods occurred.
• Education and specialized skills — degrees, professional licenses, certifications.
• Property or business ties — home ownership, business operation, U.S. investments.
• Tax compliance — every year you have been required to file, whether returns were filed and taxes paid.

Category 4: Community standing and character

• Any arrests, charges, or convictions anywhere in the world, even those that were dismissed or sealed.
• Cooperation with law enforcement, military service, formal community recognition.
• Volunteer work or community service beyond anything required by a court.
• Letters of recommendation you can credibly request from employers, clergy, teachers, neighbors, and community leaders.

To see exactly what the FBI holds on you before you list it, request your own record; our post on continuous vetting of immigration applicants walks through the steps.

What goes in the filing now

Out of your self-assessment, your attorney will identify the three to five strongest positive factors and any negative factors that need to be addressed. The filing-stage package responds to those, with evidence behind each claim. The principle is document, do not assert. An officer reading “my marriage is genuine” is unmoved; an officer reading the same claim supported by a joint lease, a joint bank statement, joint health insurance, photographs across the relationship’s timeline, and an affidavit from someone who knows the couple is in a different posture entirely.

For a marriage-based green card case, the filing-stage package typically includes:

• An updated applicant declaration centered on the bona fides of the marriage, the U.S.-citizen spouse and any U.S.-citizen children, and the hardship of separation.
• A short letter from the U.S.-citizen spouse, in their own words.
• The bona fide marriage evidence the case already gathered — joint financial documentation, lease or mortgage, joint insurance, photos.
• A clean cover letter that names PM-602-0199, the immediate relative carve-outs in INA §245(c), and the equities the file documents.

For an employment-based green card case, the filing-stage package typically includes:

• An updated applicant declaration emphasizing the unbroken record of lawful nonimmigrant status, tax compliance, and the years of investment by the U.S. employer.
• A letter from the petitioning employer describing the specific cost of losing the worker for the duration of consular processing — months of lost services, projects affected, clients at risk, the cost of recruiting and training a replacement, and why a quick replacement is impractical in this market.
• A clean cover letter that names PM-602-0199 and its footnote 20 — which says that lawful status in a dual-intent category is not enough, on its own, to warrant a favorable exercise of discretion — recites what the record already shows (the certified PERM, the approved I-140, and a current priority date), and identifies the employer-hardship equities that answer that footnote directly.

The same logic — file a defensible response now, build the full equities record for the interview — applies to other discretionary adjustment categories as well. Asylee adjustment under INA §209(b), for example, is discretionary by the statute’s own terms even though the underlying timing dynamics differ, and the same two-phase approach fits.

What to build for the interview

In the months between filing and the interview, build the supplemental record that turns a defensible file into a persuasive one. The list is longer than what goes in at filing, and is the work that often takes the case from approval-likely to approval-without-friction.

• Affidavits from family, friends, neighbors, and (in marriage cases) the U.S.-citizen spouse’s family who have observed the relationship.
• A letter from a physician or pediatrician, where the case turns on the health or care of a U.S.-citizen family member.
• Where the applicant’s own health is at issue, the record described in our guide to the public charge health factor.
• A complete set of joint financial records — bank statements, lease or mortgage, joint insurance, joint tax returns — organized chronologically.
• Letters of professional recommendation from supervisors, colleagues, or clients, where the case turns on the applicant’s work.
• Photo evidence organized as a timeline — meeting, dating, engagement, wedding, life together, children.
• Documentation of community involvement — volunteer hours, charitable contributions, church or temple membership, school involvement for any U.S.-citizen children.
• A pre-interview meeting with your attorney to walk through the discretionary factors and prepare you (and, in marriage cases, your spouse; in EB cases, an employer representative if appropriate) for the interview questions you can expect.

Some of these items are quick to obtain. Others — pediatrician letters, formal recommendation letters, organized photographic timelines — take weeks to produce well. Starting them at filing rather than waiting until the interview notice arrives is the difference between an interview with the full record on the table and an interview where the file is still being assembled.

When this approach is the right one — and when it is not

Two-phase thinking is right for cases that were ready or nearly ready when the memo dropped, where the legal eligibility is clean and the discretionary case is strong but undocumented. Most marriage cases and most employment-based cases with compliant status histories fit this profile. So do many asylee adjustments where the underlying asylum grant provides much of the affirmative equity.

Two-phase thinking is not the right approach for cases with serious problems — a meaningful criminal history, prior fraud or misrepresentation, a current or prior removal order, long periods of unauthorized work, or an undisclosed false statement on a prior immigration form. Those cases need full attorney evaluation before anything is filed, because the discretionary calculus, the admissibility analysis, and the consular-processing comparison all change. The interview-day equities are not what saves them; the legal posture established at filing is.

The cases in the middle — where there is a single overstay, a brief period out of status, or a prior visa refusal — are judgment calls. They can usually be addressed under the two-phase framework, but the attorney conversation matters more than in the clean-case versions.

Working with an attorney

If you have a case that was ready to file when the memo dropped, you are working under a particular kind of time pressure: every week you spend rebuilding the package from scratch is a week added to the interview wait. The realistic alternative is a focused conversation with your attorney that produces three things in a single afternoon: a clear list of your strongest discretionary equities based on the self-assessment above, a list of the documents that prove them, and a plan for what gets filed now versus what gets gathered for the interview.

If you do not yet have an attorney and you are in the Rocky Mountain West, we serve clients across Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, and Colorado. We were preparing several marriage and employment-based adjustment cases when PM-602-0199 was issued, and we developed the two-phase framework described in this article in response to that exact problem. We are continuing to refine it as cases move through. If you would like to discuss your own case, you can reach Immigration Law of Montana, P.C. through the contact page on our website.