More than 55,000 cases for family-based Green Cards are pending in Florida, according to a report authored by the group Manifest Law.
The state's backlog is the largest in the nation, as pending applications overall have reached a record high.
It means Floridians stand to be the most impacted by a federal policy shift that could make it even harder for immigrants to become Legal Permanent Residents.
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The state with the second-most pending cases is California with 48,018.
Out of the 89 U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) field offices that process Green Cards, Orlando ranks 5th with 11,486 pending applications in fiscal year 2025.
Tampa ranks 8th with 9,634 applications.
The Trump Administration announced in May that immigrants would have to return to their home countries as they await their Green Card, bucking a longstanding policy that allowed them to remain in the U.S. during the process.
Instead, under the new policy, immigrants would only be allowed to stay in the U.S. – through a process known as "adjustment of status" – under "extraordinary circumstances."
This potential shift towards what's known as "consular processing" abroad could exacerbate wait times as U.S. consulates in foreign countries face their own backlogs.
Meanwhile, immigrants would be forced to live separately from their families and leave their jobs in the U.S potentially for months or years at a time.
The administration has since walked back the May memo, saying most immigrants won't need to leave the U.S. But without additional guidance on who is eligible for adjustment of status, attorneys and immigration officers are left in the dark.
Ana Gabriela Urizar, an immigration attorney with Manifest Law, said the memo, despite the administration's backtracking, has already affected the way some immigration officers are interviewing applicants.
Some attorneys, she said, were "getting requests for evidence for pending cases – cases that were filed two years ago – asking for the client to say why they deserve to file for a Green Card in the U.S. rather than going abroad."
But not all immigration officers have followed the same line of questioning, Urizar said, indicating the confusion even within USCIS.
What could change?
Traditionally, immigration law has allowed people who entered the U.S. legally and maintained lawful status to apply for their Green Card domestically.
Sui Chung, executive director of Americans for Immigrant Justice, said there's more than 70 years of precedent for that.
"This memo recharacterizes adjustment of status as an exceptional form of relief rather than routine, so that's why this new policy is very significant, because we don't know how it's going to play out," said Chung.
For the last two and a half decades, a majority of Green Cards have been approved domestically, or through adjustment of status, rather than abroad, according to the Pew Research Center.
The shift could also severely impact immediate relatives who have overstayed their visas.
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Typically, immediate relatives of a U.S. citizen can apply for a Green Card within the U.S. even if they've overstayed the terms of their visa — that is as long as they pass other eligibility requirements, such as having entered the U.S. lawfully and passed rigorous background checks needed to obtain their Green Card.
Some people have let their original visa expire while waiting for their Green Card to process with this understanding.
But with the policy change, attorneys and their clients are worried they could be forced to return to their home countries, which would then trigger multi-year bars from re-entering the U.S.
The length of the ban can range from three to 10 years, depending on an individual's case, such as how much time they accumulated "unlawful status."
"It could be years of separation and processing, so the impact is not obviously just to the immigrant, it's to the U.S. citizen petitioner," said Chung.
Urizar said, originally, the law's intent was to "avoid family separation, to allow for people to have stability in their lives — people that have jobs, careers in the U.S."
Anticipating a harsher burden of proof, some attorneys have begun filing legal briefs explaining why their client deserves to stay in the U.S. as they await their Green Card.
"Legally it's not a requirement, it's not something that we've seen in this space, in this practice, but that's something that has been happening," said Urizar.
At the same time, the administration has halted visa processing for more than 70 countries, presenting extreme uncertainty for those nationals.
"If families are told that the non-citizen family member must return to his or her country of origin to process their immigrant visa, but immigrant visas are not being processed there, it's a Catch-22. These policies will effectively create an indefinite separation of families," wrote the World Relief, a humanitarian aid and advocacy organization.
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