Sponsors (2)
The bill substantially expands legal immigration pathways and speeds family and refugee reunification—reducing long waits for millions—while shifting major administrative burdens, raising fiscal and local service pressures, and introducing new discretionary, procedural, and enforcement trade‑offs that could affect fairness and vetting integrity.
Millions of family-sponsored applicants (including spouses, parents, children, adult children, and siblings) will face much shorter waits because the bill raises annual family- and overall immigrant visa levels (480,000 baseline plus recaptured unused visas) and expands category allocations, substantially reducing multiyear backlogs.
Employment-based applicants will have access to a larger annual worldwide level (140,000 plus carryovers), which should shorten waits for employment-based green cards and reduce uncertainty for sponsored workers and U.S. employers.
People in recognized permanent (non‑marital) partnerships and their qualifying children gain an explicit statutory path to sponsor and receive immigration benefits similar to spouses, easing reunification for couples who cannot marry.
The large increases and recapture of decades of unused visas, plus expanded programs and expedited processing, will impose major administrative burdens and costs on the Department of State, USCIS, and consulates (staffing, training, systems), risking implementation delays unless funded and resourced.
Higher overall immigration levels (family, employment, and diversity increases) may be perceived to increase competition for local jobs, housing, schools, and public services, placing fiscal and integration pressures on some communities and taxpayers.
Raising per-country caps (from 7%/2% to 20%/5%) could concentrate visas among applicants from a few countries and prolong waits or reduce fairness for applicants from other countries.
Based on analysis of 8 sections of legislative text.
Raises family and diversity visa limits, recaptures unused visa numbers, creates a "permanent partner" category, and prioritizes refugee family reunification and preservation of certain past diversity visas.
Introduced December 10, 2025 by Mazie Hirono · Last progress December 10, 2025
Expands legal immigration by raising annual family‑sponsored and diversity visa limits, recapturing unused visa numbers from prior years, and creating a new "permanent partner" category that allows certain nonmarital partners and their children to be treated like spouses for immigration purposes. It also requires the State Department and DHS to speed and prioritize refugee family reunification, preserve certain past diversity visa selections lost to travel bans or COVID‑19, and direct embassy and consular procedures to ease family‑based refugee processing. The bill changes how visa ceilings are calculated (adding retroactive carryover pools), adds new definitions and eligibility rules, and imposes new processing and notification duties on the Department of State and Department of Homeland Security. The result would increase available immigrant visas, create new qualifying family relationships, and direct U.S. agencies to reduce barriers to refugee family reunification and to preserve certain previously lost diversity visas.