(UNITED STATES) — The U.S. Department of Homeland Security published a Proposed Rule on June 5, 2026 that would sharply restrict discretionary work permits for humanitarian parolees, deferred action recipients and others.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services separately pushed a policy that says many people seeking permanent residence should leave the country and apply from abroad.

DHS said in the notice, listed as DHS Docket No. USCIS-2026-0067, that it wants to narrow who qualifies for discretionary employment authorization and tighten the conditions attached to renewals.

DHS proposes to limit and clarify eligibility for discretionary employment authorization for aliens paroled into the United States temporarily for urgent humanitarian reasons.

The agency wrote: “aliens applying for employment authorization who admit to committing, have been arrested for, or have been convicted of certain criminal acts do not warrant a favorable exercise of discretion unless there are significant countervailing public interests.”

USCIS also issued Policy Memorandum PM-602-0199, published on May 22, 2026 and updated in June 2026, describing adjustment of status as an act of administrative grace.

A USCIS spokesperson said, “From now on, an alien who is in the U.S. temporarily and wants a Green Card must return to their home country to apply, except in extraordinary circumstances.”

Under the June 5 notice, DHS would apply the tighter standard to humanitarian parolees in category (c)(11), deferred action recipients in category (c)(14), and people on orders of supervision in category (c)(18).

Applicants would have to prove “economic necessity“ to obtain permission to work.

The rule would also require mandatory biometrics for all discretionary employment authorization applicants. Renewal requests would have to tie to employers enrolled in E-Verify, adding another compliance step for workers and companies.

DHS proposed shortening some employment authorization document validity periods to one year. Shorter validity means more frequent renewals and more repeated screening.

Those changes arrive after the government largely rescinded the 180-day or 540-day automatic extensions that many workers had used as a bridge while renewal applications remained pending in late 2025 and early 2026.

Many applicants now face expiration dates without that backstop.

A separate asylum-related proposal, published on February 23, 2026, would link work permit eligibility for affirmative asylum seekers to a 180-day processing benchmark.

If USCIS backlogs run longer than that, new work permits would stop for that group until the agency clears the backlog.

Together, the moves mark a different federal view of work authorization. DHS and USCIS are shifting from treating work permits as a common way to promote self-sufficiency for people in temporary or unresolved status toward a high-discretion system centered on enforcement, deterrence and proof of hardship.

That shift appears in the mechanics of the rule itself. Economic necessity replaces a broader assumption that someone allowed to remain temporarily should also have a routine path to legal employment, while biometrics and E-Verify turn the work permit process into a more intensive screening system.

DHS estimates that the June 5, 2026 proposal alone could affect approximately 978,000 EAD applications each year.

The number gives a sense of how widely the change would reach across pending and future requests for employment authorization.

The practical effect for workers can be immediate. A person whose renewal no longer carries an automatic extension can lose work authorization before USCIS decides the case, and the proposed one-year validity periods would force more applicants back into that cycle sooner.

That pattern can create gaps in employment and income. It can also push some people toward under-the-table work after legal employment ends, especially if they cannot meet the new economic necessity test in the form DHS wants.

Employers face a different problem. Companies that hire workers with temporary authorization now have to track expiration dates more closely, watch whether a bridge extension still applies, and confirm E-Verify enrollment for renewals that would depend on it under the proposed rule.

The burden falls heaviest on workplaces that depend on repeated renewals and large volumes of time-limited authorization documents. A missed expiration date can abruptly remove an employee from payroll, while more frequent renewals increase filing cycles and compliance checks.

Fees also rise in effect even where the filing charge itself does not change in the text of the June 5 proposal. Shorter validity periods mean more renewal filings, and more renewal filings mean workers and employers pay more often.

The Labour Ministry phrasing in the broader discussion of Work Permit Regulations has also surfaced outside the United States this month, though those changes come from separate governments and legal systems.

Sweden imposed a new salary threshold for work permits on June 1, 2026, requiring workers to earn at least 90% of the median salary.

Oman moved on the same date through its Ministry of Labour, requiring professional licenses for more than 30 job categories and raising expatriate work permit fees by 50%.

The Philippines followed on June 9, 2026, centralizing Alien Employment Permit processing in the Bureau of Local Employment under the Department of Labor.

Those steps abroad differ in design, but each points to closer state control over legal work authorization. In the United States, the current version comes through DHS and USCIS, with tighter discretion, more vetting and less room for automatic continuation of permission to work.

DHS and USCIS have posted related announcements through the DHS news page and the USCIS newsroom.

The federal actions now in play center on one broad result: more people will need to prove need, renew more often, and clear more screening steps before they can keep working legally.