US Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari has said the Trump administration’s announcement that applicants must leave the US to apply for permanent residency raises concerns for thousands of Iranians already in visa limbo, Al Jazeera reports.

The proposed changes mean that Iranians seeking Green Cards could be “forced to leave the country and process their case from abroad [even though] there is no US embassy in Iran”, the Democratic congresswoman said.

“Right now, more than 12,000 Iranian nationals who are here legally on student or work visas are already living in fear because of the Trump Administration’s [visa] processing pause,” Ansari said in a post on X.

“And they could be sent back into the hands of a brutal regime in the middle of war and political repression.”