Sponsors (51)
Official title: To amend section 249 of the Immigration and Nationality Act to render available to certain long-term residents of the United States the benefit under that section.
Introduced July 23, 2025 by Zoe Lofgren · Last progress July 23, 2025
The bill makes it significantly easier for long‑resident noncitizens to access a pathway to legal status and reduces administrative complexity, while increasing legal uncertainty, administrative and local fiscal burdens, and leaving enforcement risks intact for those barred on other grounds.
Long‑term noncitizen immigrants (present in the U.S. at least seven years) can become eligible to apply for registry without continuous‑residence or good‑moral‑character tests, expanding their pathway to legal status.
Long‑resident noncitizens gaining an easier path to regularize status can stabilize employment, increase labor-market participation, and potentially raise tax revenues.
The bill simplifies the registry application standard and reduces paperwork, lowering administrative complexity and processing burden for applicants and immigration agencies (USCIS/DHS).
Immigrants who meet the temporal criterion may still face removal or denial if other statutory bars (e.g., criminal inadmissibility) apply, so eligibility does not guarantee protection from enforcement.
The narrower, time‑only eligibility test could create legal uncertainty about interactions with other immigration bars, likely prompting litigation and additional administrative work for DHS and DOJ.
States and localities may face increased short‑term demand for services as newly eligible individuals seek benefits tied to legal status, raising costs for local budgets and taxpayers.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Replaces the registry eligibility subsection with a single requirement: the alien must have entered the U.S. at least 7 years before the application date.
Replaces the current statutory test for registry (8 U.S.C. §1259) with a single eligibility requirement that an applicant must have entered the United States at least seven years before the application date. The bill removes the present-text's separate listed conditions (a historical entry date, continuous residence requirement, good moral character, and bars related to deportability/citizenship ineligibility) from that subsection and takes effect 60 days after enactment.