Green card applicants must first leave US under new Trump administration policy

(CNN) — The Trump administration will now require people seeking green cards to leave the United States during the application process, a sweeping change that could upend the lives of hundreds of thousands of people seeking the right to legally and permanently live and work in the US.

In a new rule announced Friday, U.S. immigration authorities said green card applicants would have to return to their home countries to apply for permanent visas.

The abrupt policy change stands to affect a large swath of the legal U.S. immigration population, compelling those seeking legal permanent residency to leave the country — separating families, forcing people to leave their jobs and disrupting communities in the process. Applying for a green card is a notoriously arduous process that can take several months to years to complete.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said the rule provides exemptions for “extraordinary circumstances,” Zach Kahler, a spokesperson for the agency, said in a statement.

“When aliens apply from their home country, it reduces the need to find and remove those who decide to slip into the shadows and rem...