What happens to legal immigrants and green-card holders living in Texas?

Their lives do not get upended. People who are in Texas lawfully stay lawfully, and the status of lawful permanent residents already living here is exactly the kind of acquired right that a transition is built to protect. Independence is a change of government, not a mass eviction.

Lawful residents keep their lawful status

Start with the principle. When sovereignty changes, the settled approach in international practice is to protect the legal status people have already acquired, not to wipe it out. The Vienna Convention on State Succession reflects the rule that a new state generally cannot simply revoke rights individuals lawfully held under the predecessor. For someone living in Texas on a green card or another lawful status, that means the default is continuity. The framework that recognizes their right to live and work here carries forward into the transition while the details are settled, rather than vanishing the day the flag changes.

What a "green card" actually is, and why that matters

A US green card is lawful permanent residence in the United States. Under US rules, a permanent resident holds that status until they either naturalize or give it up, and ordinary travel does not jeopardize it. That is useful to understand for two reasons. First, a green-card holder living in Texas does not automatically lose their US permanent residence because Texas becomes independent, any more than a US citizen automatically loses citizenship. Second, it shows the world already runs systems that track and preserve a person's lawful status across borders and over time. An independent Texas steps into that reality, it does not break it.

Texas would set its own residency and citizenship rules going forward

Looking ahead, an independent Texas would define its own categories of residency and its own path to citizenship, the way every nation does, and that work belongs to the future Texas Legislature. The live answers already sketch the shape of it: a lawful resident, including a spouse who is not a natural-born Texan, would likely follow a familiar model, holding residency and completing a period in the country before full citizenship, much as the United States does now. The exact rules are not written yet, and we will not pretend they are. What can be said is that people lawfully in Texas would have a defined, fair status under the new nation's law.

A transition period, not a cliff

Independence does not happen as a single overnight switch, and that protects people. A negotiated transition keeps existing arrangements running while new ones are stood up, so a lawful resident is not left in limbo. The same logic that protects citizens' Social Security and banking across the transition protects the standing of people who are here legally. Continuity is the default; disruption is the thing both governments have every incentive to avoid.

Immigration policy, stated honestly

On immigration itself, the movement's position is settled and we do not go past it: Texas wants sensible, legal immigration sized to what the state can absorb and to the workers its economy needs, with citizens given priority in employment and a border that is secure. That is the existing answer, and this answer takes no position beyond it. The status of people already here lawfully is a question of protecting acquired rights, which is exactly what a responsible transition does.

The bottom line

Legal immigrants and green-card holders living in Texas keep their lawful standing through the transition, would have a defined status and a path forward under the new nation's law, and are protected by the same principle that protects every Texan's acquired rights: a change of government does not erase what you lawfully hold.