If you are sponsoring your spouse or another family member for a green card, you have probably heard some version of this advice: get the affidavit of support right, and the public charge question takes care of itself. For more than two decades, that advice was essentially true. The petitioner signed Form I-864, showed income above 125% of the federal poverty guidelines, added a joint sponsor if the numbers fell short, and the officer moved on. On September 18, 2026, that era ends. The affidavit of support is one piece of the larger adjustment of status process.
On July 20, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security published a final rule rescinding the public charge regulations that have governed adjudications since 2022. The rule takes effect September 18, 2026, and applies to every adjustment of status application postmarked — or, for online filers, electronically submitted — on or after that date. For a paper filing, the date that controls is the postmark, not the day USCIS receives the package or issues a receipt notice. It does not amend Form I-864. It does not change the income thresholds. What it changes is more consequential: whether that form still decides the public charge question at all.
What DHS Actually Did
The Immigration and Nationality Act has always made a person inadmissible if he or she is “likely at any time to become a public charge.” INA § 212(a)(4). What has changed repeatedly over the years is how the government decides who fits that description. Guidance from 1999 defined a public charge as someone primarily dependent on government cash assistance or long-term institutional care. The first Trump administration’s 2019 rule swept in a much wider set of benefits and created a new form, the I-944, before courts and the next administration unwound it. The Biden administration’s 2022 rule wrote the narrow 1999 approach into regulation and made a sufficient affidavit of support an explicitly favorable factor.
The 2026 rule takes a different approach from all of these: it removes the regulatory definitions entirely. There is no new form and no new regulatory test. In their place, the officer decides the statutory question directly, in the totality of the circumstances, starting from the minimum factors Congress listed — age; health; family status; assets, resources, and financial status; education; and skills — along with, in the rule’s words, “any empirical data relevant to an alien’s self-sufficiency” and any other case-specific circumstances. USCIS published its Policy Manual guidance on August 18, 2026 (USCIS alert). It confirms the shape of the rule: the five statutory factors, any other relevant factor, and — for benefits received on or after September 18 — “any and all” means-tested benefits, with housing assistance, food stamps, and financial aid for college named as examples. It also describes the public charge bond: an applicant found inadmissible only on public charge grounds may be invited, in a notice of intent to deny, to post a bond on Form I-945.
The End of the I-864 Safe Harbor
To be clear about what has not changed: the affidavit of support is still required in family-based cases, and an insufficient one still sinks the application — that is statutory, and no rule can remove it. The I-864 remains the floor.
What is gone is the ceiling. Under the rescinded 2022 rule, a sufficient affidavit was, by regulation, a favorable factor — and in daily practice it was usually the end of the public charge inquiry. The 2026 rule states the new reality plainly: officers have discretion to consider a Form I-864, and “officers may opt not to consider it based on specific facts of a case.” The affidavit is now the entry ticket, not the verdict. An officer can look past a fully sufficient I-864 to the applicant: education, work history, earning capacity, health, assets, and any history of means-tested benefits.
In my practice, I have sat across from couples who met in graduate school — the American spouse a teacher, the immigrant spouse an engineer with a six-figure job offer waiting on work authorization. Under the old framework, none of the engineer’s earning capacity formally mattered; the case turned on whether the teacher’s W-2 cleared $27,050 for a household of two (the I-864P figure effective March 1, 2026). That never made sense — and it cut both ways, because it also meant an applicant with no education, no work history, and no realistic prospects sailed through on a relative’s paycheck. For the first time in decades, who the applicant actually is — what they can earn and contribute — is squarely part of the decision.
An Attorney’s Candid View: the Right Diagnosis, Half the Cure
I will say what many in my profession will not: a system that evaluates the immigrant’s own self-sufficiency is more honest than one that pretends a sponsor’s signature at 125% of the poverty line answers the question. I have practiced immigration law since 1996, and I welcome this part of the change.
But the rule leaves the affidavit of support system itself untouched, and that system has real problems Washington did not address. The $27,050 threshold for a household of two works out to roughly $13 an hour — poverty-level arithmetic presented as proof of support. And the enforcement mechanism is largely theoretical. In practice, I-864 enforcement suits are brought by ex-spouses after failed marriages, not by the government agencies the contract supposedly protects. States rarely sue sponsors to recover benefits, and emergency medical care that ends up on Medicaid is, as a practical matter, never recovered. A serious reform would have rebuilt the affidavit itself. This rule does not. What it does is stop treating a flawed document as the last word — half the cure, but the right half.
Fairness requires the other side too. Rescinding every regulatory definition means two similar cases can be decided differently by two officers, and the immigration bar — including my own professional association, which opposed the rule — expects more requests for evidence, more notices of intent to deny, more interview questions, and slower processing. On that narrow point, the critics are right: discretion without published standards produces inconsistency. The Policy Manual guidance USCIS published on August 18 is, in its own words, meant “to guide but not prescribe” how officers exercise that discretion — so the inconsistency risk is real and will be tested case by case.
Does USCIS Check the Sponsor’s Credit Now?
Yes — the sponsor authorizes it by signing the current form. On August 31, 2026, USCIS published a new edition of Form I-864, dated 08/24/26. USCIS describes the change in one line: the new edition “includes a privacy release that authorizes USCIS to request information from one or more consumer reporting agencies” (USCIS I-864 page, read September 14, 2026). Put in plain terms, the sponsor’s declaration in Part 8 of the form now authorizes USCIS and the State Department to obtain the sponsor’s credit reports and scores from the credit bureaus to check whether the affidavit is sufficient, and to share what they find with the sponsored immigrant so that he or she can respond to it. A joint sponsor signs the same form, and the same authorization appears in Form I-864A (signed by household members whose income is counted) and Form I-864EZ — all three carry the 08/24/26 edition date.
Three things follow. First, the obligation runs against the sponsor, not the immigrant: it is the sponsor’s credit file — thin credit, old collections, a bankruptcy — that becomes visible in a way it never was when the affidavit was judged on tax returns alone. Second, USCIS has published no minimum score and no threshold. The credit information feeds the same sufficiency judgment the officer was already making about income and assets; in a totality-of-the-circumstances system it is one more fact about whether the promised support is real. Third — the practical point — a credit freeze can stall the case. In USCIS’s own words: “If a sponsor has a credit or security freeze on their consumer or credit report file, USCIS may not be able to access the information necessary to assess the sufficiency of Form I-864. To avoid any delays, a sponsor should expeditiously respond to any requests made to release a credit or security freeze.” Many people froze their files after a data breach and forgot. Check before the affidavit is signed, and answer any USCIS request to lift a freeze promptly.
On the edition itself: USCIS is accepting the prior 10/17/24 edition through September 30, 2026; from October 1, 2026, only the 08/24/26 edition will be processed. An I-485 filed with an outdated I-864 after that date is not rejected at the lockbox — USCIS says it will instead treat the case as missing required initial evidence under 8 CFR 103.2(b)(8), which in practice means a request for evidence, a delay, or a denial. Use the current edition, and make sure every joint sponsor does too. (Edition dates as of September 14, 2026 — confirm on the USCIS I-864 page before you file.)
Who Is Not Affected
Public charge inadmissibility does not apply to U.S. citizens — ever. It also does not apply to several categories of applicants that Congress exempted, including refugees, asylees applying for a green card, and T, U, and VAWA applicants. Current green card holders are generally not re-examined for public charge unless they are treated as new applicants for admission. If you are in an exempt category, this rule does not change your case — though some exempt applicants must still file an affidavit of support, which remains a separate requirement.
What to Do Now
If Your Case Is Ready to File: File Before September 18
The rule applies to adjustment applications “postmarked or electronically submitted on or after September 18, 2026” — those are the rule’s own words, in its DATES section. An application postmarked before that date, and accepted by USCIS, is adjudicated under the current framework. Two cautions for paper filers. First, the postmark is what counts: a package handed to the post office on September 17 is inside the old rule even if it reaches the lockbox days later, so mail it in a way that gives you a dated postmark you can prove. Second, USCIS has announced a new 09/18/26 edition of Form I-485 with no grace period: an older edition postmarked or electronically submitted on or after September 18 will be rejected, and from that date only the 09/18/26 edition is accepted (USCIS I-485 page, read September 14, 2026). If your green card through marriage case — or any family-based case — is substantially ready, the postmark date, not the day you finish assembling the package, decides which rule you get. Our complete spousal green card guide walks through what a well-prepared filing contains.
If You Will File After September 18: Build a Self-Sufficiency Record
Treat the I-864 as necessary but no longer sufficient. The file should affirmatively document the applicant’s own case for self-sufficiency: degrees and licenses, work history, a job offer or current employment, English ability, health insurance, and assets. Sponsors still matter — including joint sponsors and the strategies for meeting the income requirements when your household includes stepchildren — but the strongest post-September filing presents the applicant as someone who will never need the sponsor’s support.
If Your Case Is Already Pending
Applications postmarked or electronically submitted before September 18 stay under the old framework. But field offices are already asking more public charge questions at interviews — practitioners around the country reported this within days of the rule’s publication. This follows the pattern of the past two years, in which discretion has expanded across adjudications generally; we wrote about that shift in our analysis of the USCIS discretion memo. Bring evidence of self-sufficiency to your interview even if your case predates the rule. The same advice applies to consular processing cases: the State Department has been moving toward a totality-of-the-circumstances review since late 2025.
Government Benefits After September 18
Under the rescinded 2022 rule, only cash assistance for income maintenance and long-term institutionalization at government expense counted against an applicant. After September 18, USCIS will consider means-tested benefits much more broadly — its August 18 guidance says “any and all” such benefits, naming housing assistance, food stamps, and financial aid for college as examples, and the rule’s discussion reaches even means-tested tax benefits. Two boundaries are worth knowing. First, benefits received before September 18, 2026 are judged under the old, narrow standard — the rule is not retroactive on this point. Second, DHS states that it collects information only about the applicant’s own receipt of benefits, not a family member’s — though a household’s overall financial picture remains part of the applicant’s own assets-and-resources factor.
Do not make panic decisions about disenrolling family members from programs they lawfully use, and do not guess on benefit questions — an inaccurate answer is far more dangerous than an accurate one, as we explain in our page on why “no” can be the wrong answer on immigration forms. Get advice specific to your family before changing anything.
The Mistake to Avoid on Both Sides of the Deadline
The September 18 deadline creates two opposite mistakes, and I expect to see both.
The first is self-rejection: assuming the new regime means denial and not filing at all. It does not. The statutory factors cut in favor of most working-age, healthy applicants with work history or education — the same factors that were invisible under the old framework now help the people the system was always supposed to welcome.
The second is the panic filing: racing a defective, incomplete I-485 into the mail to beat the deadline. A rejected filing gets you the new regime anyway — the rule counts the postmark on the package USCIS actually accepts, not on one it sent back — plus lost weeks. The calendar matters, but completeness decides whether the calendar helps you. If your case can be made complete and postmarked before September 18, do it. If it cannot, file the strongest possible case under the new rules rather than the weakest possible case under the old ones.
Immigration Law of Montana has prepared family-based green card cases for more than two decades, for clients across Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, and the Rocky Mountain West. If you are weighing what September 18 means for your family — whether to file now, wait, or strengthen a pending case — contact us for a consultation. We will tell you honestly which side of the deadline serves you better.
