This Is Not an Attack on Illegal Immigration. It Is an Attack on Legal Immigration.

I want to be direct, because I think too many people are still not seeing this clearly.

The current administration's immigration policies are not targeted at illegal immigration. The evidence for that is in the policies themselves: the adjustment of status memo applies to people already here legally, with approved petitions, who followed every rule. The travel ban under Presidential Proclamation 10998 and the State Department's 75-country immigrant visa freeze target legal applicants based on their national origin. The expansion of Notices to Appear sweeps in individuals with pending applications for benefits they are legally entitled to pursue. Enforcement priorities have reversed to include people with years of legal presence and no criminal history.

This is a direct attack on legal immigration.

The goal — when you look at who these policies target and what they actually do — is to reduce the immigrant population in this country, particularly the Hispanic immigrant population. I know that is uncomfortable to say. But the data does not lie, and I am not willing to pretend otherwise.

Let me tell you what we are actually seeing.

We are seeing clients who entered this country legally, maintained their status, worked, paid taxes, raised U.S. citizen children, going to an I-485 interview and being subjected to questioning they would never have faced eighteen months ago. We are seeing work authorization delays leaving authorized workers unable to work, employers unable to fill positions, and families unable to pay their bills. We are seeing people with pending asylum applications people who by law cannot be removed while their case is pending , being detained and sent to immigration court without being given a hearing on their asylum claim, through pre-termination motions designed to close the door before they can speak.

And we are seeing a policy memo that inverts fifty-six years of legal precedent to tell officers: adjustment of status is extraordinary. Make them prove they deserve it.

None of these people crossed the border illegally. They are legal immigrants being told, by policy, that their legal rights do not matter anymore.

The economic consequences are significant and employers are beginning to feel them.

American businesses, particularly in healthcare, technology, agriculture, and construction, have built workforce strategies around legal immigration. PERM labor certification exists because there are documented shortages of U.S. workers in specific occupations. H-1B exists because American universities produce a fraction of the STEM talent the American economy needs.

When you create uncertainty about whether a legally sponsored employee can actually obtain permanent residence through adjustment of status, even after their employer invested years and tens of thousands of dollars in the PERM and I-140 process — you damage the ability of American businesses to plan and compete. You drive talent to Canada, Australia, and Germany, which are actively recruiting the workers we are turning away. You force employers to delay promotions, projects, and expansions because a key employee's immigration status has become unpredictable.

This is not an abstract cost. It is measured in lost productivity, lost innovation, and lost competitiveness. American employers and American consumers ultimately bear it.

But beyond the economics, this is about who we are as a country.

The United States is a nation of immigrants. That is not a slogan — it is history. The overwhelming majority of Americans can trace their family back two or three generations to someone who came here from somewhere else, who came seeking opportunity, who came fleeing something worse, who came and built something. That is the American story.

The immigration system of 2026 — with its heightened scrutiny, its travel bans, its discretionary denials, its work authorization delays, its expansion of enforcement to legal immigrants — did not exist in 1960. It did not exist in 1970. And if it had existed even two or three decades ago, it would have stopped many people we now consider icons of American success.

I do not say this to be political. I say it because it is factually true and it is important.

Consider Melania Trump. According to documents reviewed by the Associated Press and authenticated by a former employee of her modeling agency, she was paid $20,056 for ten modeling jobs performed between September 10 and October 15, 1996, during a period when she had entered the U.S. on a B-1/B-2 visitor visa on August 27, 1996 and did not obtain an H-1B work visa until October 18, 1996. The First Lady has denied any immigration violation, and the records have never been officially adjudicated. But the conduct documented, working for pay on a visitor visa before obtaining work authorization, is precisely the kind of status violation that PM-602-0199 lists as an adverse discretionary factor. Under the standard this administration is now applying to others, it would weigh against approval.

Consider Elon Musk. He has publicly stated he came to the U.S. on a J-1 visa and then transitioned to an H-1B. His own statements indicate he dropped out of Stanford's graduate program in 1995 to found Zip2 without enrolling. Immigration attorney Greg Siskind, a recognized J-1 visa authority, has stated publicly that a J-1 visa does not provide work authorization to someone who has dropped out of a degree program, and that Musk would have lost his status and been unauthorized to work the moment he left school. Atlanta immigration attorney Charles Kuck has stated that Musk's own admission about having a J-1 at that time "makes it clear he worked illegally." A Zip2 board member has been quoted acknowledging that the founders' immigration status "was not what it should be." No enforcement action was ever taken, and Musk became a citizen in 2002. But the conduct described by his own accounts, founding and working at a company after losing student visa status, without work authorization, is a textbook example of the adverse factors PM-602-0199 now uses to justify denying green cards to others.

I am not saying this to attack either of these individuals. People make mistakes, immigration law is complicated, and both of them built remarkable lives in this country. That is exactly the point. The immigration system worked for them, it allowed for gray areas, for adjustment, for building a life here and eventually legalizing. The system PM-602-0199 is trying to create would not have been so forgiving.

Our Constitution guarantees equal treatment under the law.

When Congress passes a statute authorizing adjustment of status for eligible, admissible immigrants, and an agency issues a memo telling officers to deny those same applicants unless they can show "extraordinary circumstances" — that is not enforcement of the law. That is defiance of it.

When the administration targets legal immigrants from specific countries with travel bans and visa freezes, while the immigration histories of the wealthy and connected attract no consequences, that is not a neutral policy.

This country was built by people who had the courage to leave everything they knew and come here. Most of them had nothing. Most of them faced barriers and discrimination and systemic disadvantage. Most of them succeeded anyway — not because the system welcomed them with open arms, but because this country's legal framework eventually guaranteed them the opportunity to compete.

We are in the process of dismantling that framework, one memo at a time.

I think most Americans, if they understood what was actually happening, would not want that. Because in two or three generations, their grandchildren will be telling the story of how their family came here. That story should still be possible to tell.

Michelle Canero is Managing Partner of Canero Fadul Reis PLLC. The views expressed are the author's own and do not constitute legal advice. For consultations: forms.canerofadul.com/242534922407960