U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued guidance in its Policy Manual on August 18, 2026, to provide more information regarding how its immigration officers will determine whether an alien applying for adjustment of status to that of a lawful permanent resident (also known as a green card holder) is likely at any time to become a public charge. The guidance emphasizes that there is no “bright-line” test in making a public-charge inadmissibility determination, which is inherently prospective and based on an alien’s individual facts and circumstances, assessed in their totality.
The agency said this guidance will replace any prior agency guidance, including the 1999 Interim Field Guidance and any other memorandum issued to instruct officers how to make public charge determinations. Moreover, this guidance does not apply to public charge adjudications for applicants for admission at ports of entry, which are handled by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or aliens applying for visas before the Department of State. It also does not apply to adjustment of status applications adjudicated by the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review.
What Is the Public Charge Ground of Inadmissibility?
The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) makes certain aliens seeking a visa, admission, or adjustment of status inadmissible if they are “likely at any time to become a public charge”. Under INA § 212(a)(4), immigration officials make this prospective determination based on the totality of the circumstances, including at least the alien’s age; health; family status; assets, resources, and financial status; and education and skills. An alien applying for a visa, admission, or adjustment of status must establish that he or she is not inadmissible under any ground of inadmissibility including the public charge ground.
Not all aliens are subject to this inadmissibility ground. For example, asylees, refugees, special immigrant juveniles, self-petitioners under the Violence Against Women Act, and other exempted groups may nonetheless be admitted or adjust status regardless of their likelihood to become a public charge.
Congress has never defined the terms “public charge” or “likely at any time to become a public charge”, and their meaning has been in flux since the first Trump administration attempted to define the term in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s first-ever public charge regulation. The 2019 regulation was short lived, however, because of litigation and the change in presidential administration. The Biden administration declined to defend the 2019 public charge rule in court and instead issued its own regulation governing public charge inadmissibility determinations in 2022.
This rule codified many of the same standards that had been in place since the Clinton administration under the 1999 Interim Field Guidance, which largely limited the types of public benefit receipts immigration officers could consider when evaluating whether an alien is likely at any time to become a public charge, and therefore inadmissible under INA § 212(a)(4). It also created a standard that required officers to consider whether an alien was primarily dependent on public benefits, not merely whether they received them.
The Biden administration’s 2022 rule was also short lived. The Trump administration formally rescinded the regulation in 2026, claiming that both the 2019 and 2022 regulations created frameworks that impermissibly limited immigration officer discretion.
Until August 2026’s Policy Manual update, in the 2022 regulation’s place was a USCIS memorandum from September 2025 instructing immigration officers to follow the statute by considering all relevant information, including at least the statutory factors (age, health, family status, financial status, and education) and applying a “totality of the circumstances” analysis. Unlike the Clinton and Biden-era approaches, USCIS placed no explicit limit on the types of means-tested public benefits that an officer could consider when making this determination.
What Is in Place Now?
USCIS’s current guidance instructs immigration officers to consider the five statutory factors (age; health; family status; assets, resources, and financial status; and education and skills) and any other factor relevant to assessing an alien’s likelihood at any time of becoming a public charge. This includes the alien’s receipt of means-tested public benefits, such as cash assistance for income maintenance, housing assistance, food stamps, financial aid for college, or any other similar benefit.
The guidance instructs immigration officers to consider the amount, duration, and recency of means-tested public benefits an alien has received. The amount and frequency of the benefits are also relevant where there is evidence that the alien is approved or certified to receive benefits in the future. Moreover, the fact that an alien has been approved or certified to receive means-tested public benefits is relevant to assessing an alien’s self-sufficiency and overall financial status. Accordingly, the guidance instructs officers to consider the alien’s applications to receive any means-tested public benefits when assessing the alien’s likelihood at any time to become a public charge, not just the actual receipt of means-tested public benefits.
A benefit is generally considered to be means-tested if eligibility for the benefit is determined based on the alien’s income or assets falling below a certain threshold, while a benefit is generally consider a “public” benefit if the payments or assistance are provided by an agency of the government or appropriated funds of the government. Earned benefits like Social Security and Medicare are not considered means-tested, nor are unemployment insurance benefits.
Because of the effective date of the withdrawal of the 2022 public charge rule, USCIS immigration officers will not consider means-tested public benefits received before September 18, 2026. USCIS will only consider the alien’s receipt of public cash assistance for income maintenance and long-term institutionalization at the government’s expense, consistent with the 2022 policy.
USCIS will consider all means-tested public benefits received on or after September 18, 2026, as a part of a totality of the circumstances analysis. The guidance clarifies that USCIS will review “all relevant evidence” in the alien’s record and make “case-by-case decisions”.
USCIS explained that its public charge inadmissibility policy is guided by four, longstanding principles: (1) whether the alien depends on means-tested public benefits to meet their needs; (2) that a public charge determination is an inherently prospective determination, noting that past or current receipt of means-tested public benefits may not always be indicative of future receipt and that no one factor, other than the lack of a sufficient Form I-864, where required, is outcome determinative; (3) an alien’s ability and willingness to work to meet their basic needs and (4) whether an alien could rely on the resources of his or her family members, sponsors, or private organizations in addition to their own capabilities to meet their basic needs.
Finally, the guidance also makes clear that the exceptions for public benefit eligibility (for the purpose of Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) implementation) do not create exceptions for the purposes of the public charge ground of inadmissibility. This means that even if PRWORA allows an alien to be eligible to receive a means-tested public benefit, the public charge statute does not permit officers to exempt that public benefit from consideration when determining whether the ground of inadmissibility applies.
Public Charge Bonds
USCIS will continue to accept public charge bonds if an officer finds that an alien applying for adjustment of status to that of a lawful permanent resident in the United States is inadmissible only because they are likely at any time to become a public charge. A public charge bond is a financial guarantee where an individual or company pays a cash bond or posts a surety bond with USCIS as an assurance that the alien will not become a public charge.
USCIS’s guidance indicates that the amount of a public charge bond will depend on the degree of government assistance the alien could be eligible for and receive over the next five years. An alien subject to the public charge ground of inadmissibility may only submit a public charge bond if USCIS invites the alien to post the bond, typically in a Notice of Intent to Deny the alien’s adjustment of status application.
Benefits Received by Dependents
Notably, USCIS will only consider an alien’s receipt of public benefits if the alien is listed as a beneficiary of the benefit. USCIS will not attribute means-tested public benefits received by the applicant’s relatives, including dependent children, or received by the alien solely on behalf of third parties.
CIS, however, has long argued that USCIS should consider means-tested public benefits received by an applicant’s dependent children because the applicant is responsible for meeting their dependent children’s basic needs. When the government provides benefits to satisfy an alien’s dependents’ needs, that assistance bears directly on whether the alien has sufficient resources to support their dependents without reliance on government assistance and should therefore be relevant to the public charge determination.