US freezes family immigration visas for 75 countries, including Haiti, Brazil

Days after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to stop families of U.S. citizens and permanent residents from adjusting their legal status through a Biden-era program, the administration on Wednesday announced it would pause family-based green-card processing for 75 countries.

More than a dozen of the nations are in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the freeze includes countries whose nationals are already banned or partially banned from entering the United States.

“The State Department will pause immigrant visa processing for countries whose migrants take welfare from the United States at unacceptable rates,” the agency said on social media,“The freeze will remain active until the U.S. can ensure that new immigrants will not extract wealth from the American people.”

The freeze keeps spouses and relatives of U.S. citizens and permanent residents from applying for lawful permanent residency. It’s the latest development in the administration’s aggressive strategy to reduce legal immigration, including family-based pathways to come to the U.S.

“It’s a direct attack on family-based migration,” said Jorge Loweree, managing director of Programs and Strategy at the American Immigration Council. “Because the vast majority of folks who get green cards through family do so from abroad. And the vast majority who get green cards through work are already here.”

A State Department spokesperson confirmed to the Miami Herald that the list includes several Latin American and Caribbean countries, including Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Dominica, Grenada, Guatemala, Haiti, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Uruguay.

“The Trump administration will always put America first,” the State Department said on Wednesday. The latest freeze on visa processing will directly affect residents of South Florida, many who hail from the countries subject to the policy and are U.S. citizens attempting to bring loved ones from abroad.

There are nearly a million U.S. citizens, both naturalized and native-born, of Cuban, Jamaican, Brazilian, Colombian and Haitian descent in Miami-Dade, according to a Herald analysis of U.S. Census Bureau figures.

Those numbers don’t include U.S. permanent residents from these countries who can also apply for green cards for relatives abroad, or U.S. citizens from other Latin American and Caribbean nations also affected by the visa freeze. The new policy appears to target people who are processing their visas in consulates abroad, but the State Department has not yet published details about how it will work.

Some immigrant visas are also given to people through employment-based sponsorship and foreign children in the process of being adopted by American parents. However, experts note that the majority of people who get work-based green cards are already in the U.S.

The Trump administration had already banned the entry of nationals from 39 countries, some listed under Wednesday’s visa freeze, including Haiti, Cuba and several Caribbean countries. That presidential proclamation originally included exceptions for spouses, immediate relatives, and adopted children of U.S. citizens when it came out in June. However, a mid-December version of the proclamation no longer includes them.

In a statement, Antigua’s ambassador to the U.S., Sir Ronald Sanders said his government had not received any formal announcement. After contacting a senior State Department official, he said he was informed the decision arose from a new requirement under direction of the White House and involved solely those in line for a green card.

In 2023, the Biden administration launched a new Family Reunification Parole program. The new programs allowed people caught in visa backlogs to join their family members in the United States while waiting for their visas to become available. On Dec. 12, the Department of Homeland Security announced the end of the Biden-era family reunification programs for Colombia, Cuba, Haiti, Ecuador, El Salvador, and Honduras, citing insufficient vetting and said the program was being abused.

Experts say the program terminations and visa restrictions, which overlap with policies like a bond of up to $15,000 for professionals and tourists from certain countries, are designed to drown immigrants in bureaucracy so they abandon efforts to come to the U.S. altogether. Critics, including immigration lawyers, have said the U.S. is targeting certain countries through its immigration policies based on racial animus and discrimination.

David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, called the Trump administration’s measures “the most anti-legal immigration agenda in American history” and called on Congress to limit executive authority over legal migration. Bier estimates that the action will ban nearly half of all legal immigrants and about 315,000 people this next year alone.

The State Department said in order to come up with the list of countries affected by the visa freezes, the Trump administration used the rate at which immigrants from certain countries tap into social welfare in the United States, becoming what the government refers to as “public charges.” The administration has proposed tightening admissibility requirements based on the likelihood of an immigrant depending on public benefits once they come to the United States. The government looks at age, health, family status, financial health, among others, to make the determination.

The administration also reviewed visa overstay rates from certain countries. However, some nations not subject to the travel ban have higher visa overstay rates than those that are included in the new measures.

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