Yesterday’s USCIS update its policy manual:

A false claim to U.S. citizenship no longer needs to be “knowing” to permanently bar someone from getting immigration status (with no chance at waivers).

https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-8-part-k-chapter-2

A not uncommon scanario: person grows up always with a US birth certificate, fully believing they have always been US citizen. Then one day as an adult, maybe while applying for a passport, they are informed that authorities found a birth registered for them in Mexico.

They confront their parents and maybe learn it is true. They were born in Mexico.

Life is turned upside down.

They are not only not a US citizen, they have no immigration status at all. Even if they have never stepped into Mexico since infancy.

This is always complicated to try to clean up. But if they have a US citizen spouse or an adult US citizen child, we could successfully argue that their life full of wrong statements that they’re a US citizen don’t make them permanently ineligible because they were not “knowing.”

This quiet update just completely screws these people, who have literally never consciously done anything in violation of immigration laws.

It is gratuitous cruelty.

Are these super common? No. But in Colorado I’ve basically always had at least one case on similar facts going over the course of 12 yrs of practice.

And it is far more common in Texas.

DHS: leaving no stone unturned in its search to find new ways to ruin lives.