Trump Administration to Force Foreigners in the U.S. to Apply for a Green Card Abroad

Trump Administration to Force Foreigners in the U.S. to Apply for a Green Card Abroad

For over half a century, foreign nationals with legal status have been able to apply for and complete the entire process for permanent residence inside the United States. The Trump administration announced Friday that foreigners in the U.S. temporarily who want a green card must now leave and apply in their home country, with exceptions only for "extraordinary circumstances" assessed case-by-case by USCIS officers.

About 600,000 people already in the U.S. apply for a green card each year. Doug Rand, a former senior advisor at USCIS during the Biden administration, said: "The goal of this policy is very explicit. Senior officials in this administration have said over and over that they want fewer people to get permanent residency because permanent residency is a path to citizenship and they want to block that path for as many people as possible."

USCIS did not say when the change takes effect, whether applicants must remain abroad throughout the entire process, or how it affects those whose applications are already underway. Experts and attorneys warned that people from countries with suspended consular services could be permanently barred from returning.

Gobble's Take: No start date, no transition rules, no clarity on pending cases — and for applicants from countries with no functioning U.S. embassy, no path back at all.

Source: NPR World

Rubio Lands in Kolkata on a Four-Day Mission to Repair U.S.-India Ties and Shore Up the Quad

Secretary of State Marco Rubio touched down in Kolkata on Saturday for his first official visit to India — a four-day, multi-city trip that mixes strategic diplomacy with a gala reception in New Delhi marking the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence. The timing is pointed: U.S.-India relations have been under strain since Trump's tariff policies raised duties on several Indian exports, and Washington is now trying to stabilize one of its most consequential partnerships in the Indo-Pacific.

The diplomatic agenda is dense. Rubio is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, hold bilateral talks with India's External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, and participate in the ministerial meeting of the Quad — the strategic alliance of the U.S., India, Australia, and Japan — on Tuesday in New Delhi. The Quad has been a persistent institutional irritant for Beijing; the alliance has repeatedly accused China of aggressively expanding its military presence in the South China Sea and pushing its maritime territorial claims. China dismisses the grouping as a containment operation against its economic and military rise. It is notable that after Rubio's own inauguration as Secretary of State last year, his very first formal international engagement was a meeting with the foreign ministers of the other Quad countries — a signal of how central the alliance is to Washington's Indo-Pacific posture.

The anniversary celebration is genuine, but the real gift Washington is hoping to deliver in New Delhi is a reset that survives the next round of tariff negotiations.

Gobble's Take: When your closest Indo-Pacific ally needs a four-day apology tour to feel wanted again, the tariff policy that caused it deserves a harder look than the gala reception does.

Source: NPR World

A Ukrainian Drone Just Hit a Russian Chemical Plant 900 Miles from the Front, Producing Nearly 900 Tons of Ammonia a Day

On day 1,549 of the war, a Ukrainian drone struck the AKM chemical complex of the Metafrax company in Gubakha, located in Russia's Perm Krai region — deep inside Russian territory, far from any active front line. The facility produces ammonia and urea at industrial scale: nearly 900 tons of ammonia and over 1,600 tons of urea per day, according to reporting aggregated by r/worldnews citing a Telegram source.

The same 24-hour period saw Russia lose an estimated 950 soldiers killed and wounded, along with 4 air defense systems, 1 multiple-launch rocket system, and 5 tanks, according to Ukraine's Ukrainska Pravda. Cumulative Russian military personnel losses since the invasion began on February 24, 2022 are now estimated at approximately 1,354,810, per the same source. The drone strike on a chemical production facility — rather than an oil refinery or power station — suggests Ukraine's deep-strike campaign is actively hunting new categories of industrial target, aiming to broaden the economic pressure beyond energy infrastructure.

When a drone can reach an ammonia plant hundreds of miles inside Russia and the cumulative personnel losses are approaching 1.4 million, the war has long since stopped being a border dispute.

Gobble's Take: Russia's industrial heartland is now a legitimate theater of war, and Moscow's ability to sustain both the front lines and the factories feeding them is getting harder to take for granted.

Source: r/worldnews

In Case You Missed It

Yesterday's top stories:

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• The White House Says "More Troops for Poland!" Europe Says "Wait, What?"
• Italy Demands an Apology From Israel Over Gaza Flotilla Incident
• The Taliban's New Law: Silence Means "I Do" for Girls at Puberty