President Donald Trump has already made it harder to get new US visas. His administration has also slowed down Green Card approvals, stretching waiting periods even further. Now comes another decision. In the coming months, immigration department field offices have been told to closely examine the documents of at least 200 naturalised Americans.
These are people who were not born in the United States but became citizens after living there, mostly through Green Cards or other legal routes. Officials say that if any âirregularityâ is found during this scrutiny, their citizenship could be revoked. According to government data, there are currently around 2.6 crore naturalised Americans in the country.
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To understand why this matters, consider this: last year alone, nearly 8 lakh people obtained US citizenship. A report by The New York Times pointed out that, until now, federal rules allowed citizenship to be taken away only in cases of fraud, misrepresentation, or a few very specific violations. Under the new approach, however, a much larger section of citizens could face that risk.
Around the same time, the US President also announced the immediate shutdown of the Diversity Visa Program, better known as the Green Card Lottery System. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on social media platform X that Claudio Manuel, accused of shooting two students at Brown University and killing an MIT professor two days later, had entered the US in 2017 through the Diversity Lottery Immigrant Visa Program (DV1). He later obtained a Green Card through this route. Citing public safety concerns, the government has now suspended this visa system indefinitely.
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Where does this leave Indians?
Experts say that while Indians have already been hit hard by stricter rules on H-1B and similar work visas, they are unlikely to be affected in this specific case. The reason is simple. Indians cannot apply for DV1 visas at all. The Diversity Visa route is meant for countries that send very few immigrants to the US. Nations like India, China, and Mexico, where large numbers migrate to America every year, are excluded from this lottery.
