The Federal Government Is Punishing Immigrants Who Play by the Rules

On Thursday, the federal government quietly issued a memo that could force legal, law-abiding immigrants, including engineers, scientists, and founders, out of the country. As the President and CEO of Y Combinator, the startup accelerator that has backed Airbnb, Stripe, DoorDash, Coinbase, and thousands of other technology companies, I witness the ingenuity of immigrant founders on a daily basis. Pushing them out would mean depriving our country of essential talent and enriching geopolitical rivals like China — a lose-lose for the U.S.

The memo (USCIS Policy Memorandum PM-602-0199) reclassifies “adjustment of status,” the standard process for obtaining a green card while living and working in the United States, as “extraordinary relief.” In other words, it makes the established legal pathway used by over half of all green card recipients last year a privilege to be granted only at the discretion of individual officers. Per this memo, even being on an O-1 or “genius” visa, a classification for immigrants with “extraordinary achievement” in the arts, sciences, or business, is “not sufficient, on its own” to justify remaining in America.

The O-1 visa is the most common pathway for Y Combinator founders from outside the United States to participate in our program, which has an acceptance rate of less than one percent. Under this memo, someone like Patrick Collison, the Irish founder of Stripe, could have his green card application denied by a USCIS official on broad “discretion” grounds and be forced to return to Ireland to wait out the process there. His options are either to stay in the US on a temporary visa indefinitely, with all the precarity that entails, or leave the country and risk never being allowed back in.

This is a catastrophe for American industry. 55 percent of our billion-dollar startups were founded by immigrants. 65 percent of our leading AI companies have at least one immigrant founder. The founders we’ve funded at Y Combinator don’t take American jobs. Instead, they create American jobs by building new companies that employ thousands. This memo could make their contributions impossible.

Its legal foundation is also questionable. Congress codified adjustment of status in 1952 specifically so immigrants wouldn’t have to leave the country to apply for it. It expanded the pathway in 1994 and again in 2000, when it passed the American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act, a law that assumed workers would adjust status in-country. Critics argue that USCIS issued this memo without the notice-and-comment rulemaking that the Administrative Procedure Act requires for major policy changes.

But litigating this memo could take months, and we don’t have months. USCIS officers now have the authority to deny arbitrarily deny green card applications from talented legal immigrants, leaving them with no path to permanent residency without leaving the country.

This has consequences beyond just the domestic arena. If America wants to continue competing on an international stage, this memo is a step in the wrong direction. America’s startup ecosystem is a national treasure; it is perhaps the most important economic engine this country has. When we tell immigrant founders to leave, we are telling the world that America is no longer investing in building at the frontier.

Where the United States falls short, other countries will pick up the slack. The Chinese government is actively recruiting the talent we are expelling. Founders that are forced out of San Francisco may turn to the next best thing in Beijing, Toronto, or London.

Halting this disastrous policy requires immediate action. The government must rescind PM-602-0199 and ensure that the hundreds of thousands of adjustment of status applications already in the pipeline are processed under the rules that existed when they were filed. If the administration wants to reform immigration processing, they must do it through proper rulemaking with public comment, transition periods, and an honest accounting of the economic consequences.

The extraordinary immigrants building companies that employ thousands of our fellow citizens are making important contributions to American greatness. They deserve better than to be shown the door.