In a major shift from longstanding practice, the Department of Homeland Security U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that immigrants on student, work and other time-bound visas who become eligible for permanent residency status (green cards) will have to leave the country and be processed through overseas embassies and consulates. This change is expected to lead to lengthy family separation.

For immigrants from the 75 countries where immigration visa processing has been halted since January, separation would effectively become permanent, unless the U.S. citizen spouse and children were able to relocate overseas.

“President Trump campaigned on a pro-family agenda and promised to uphold traditional family values,” said Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). “While addressing visa overstay rates is a worthwhile goal, this new USCIS policy undermines family unity. We urge President Trump to overrule this decision and reject a policy that disregards real consequences for families.”

The NAE and its humanitarian arm, World Relief, recently published a report, “Joined Together, Torn Apart,” estimating that 1.3 million citizens could be separated through mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. The policy announced today would extend that separation to hundreds of thousands of additional families.

“Healthy, intact families are the foundation for a flourishing society,” Kim said. “From the opening pages of Scripture, we see that God establishes the family as the foundational institution for human flourishing, long before the establishment of government. Jesus reaffirms this when he teaches that what God has joined together, no one should separate. When public policies result in the separation of spouses and children, they undermine something sacred and call for careful moral reflection.”