Sponsors (2)
The bill substantially expands family‑ and employment‑based immigration access and speeds refugee family reunification—reducing long backlogs and creating new protections—while increasing overall immigration levels and imposing significant administrative, fiscal, legal, and security trade‑offs that will require additional agency capacity and careful oversight.
Millions of family‑ and employment‑based applicants (and their relatives) will face shorter waits and greater access to green cards because the bill raises annual visa limits, recaptures unused visas, and increases diversity and employment‑based allocations.
Unmarried and married adult children and siblings of U.S. citizens receive substantially higher category allocations (large numeric increases), materially speeding family reunification for those preference categories.
People in long‑term permanent (non‑marital) partnerships and their eligible children gain a clear statutory path to sponsor/obtain immigration benefits similar to spouses, expanding legal recognition where marriage is unavailable.
Higher visa caps and recapture increase immigration levels and could raise demand on public services, housing, schools, and local budgets—imposing costs that will be felt by taxpayers and state/local governments.
The State Department and DHS will face substantial administrative and implementation burdens (staffing, funding, processing capacity) to identify eligible applicants, recapture visas, train consular staff, and meet new deadlines—creating risk of delays or added federal cost.
Tighter one‑year adjudication deadlines and accelerated processing could pressure vetting timelines and lead agencies to truncate or waive steps except in explicit national security exceptions, raising potential security risks.
Based on analysis of 8 sections of legislative text.
Recaptures past unused immigrant visas into annual family/employment limits, raises diversity visas to 80,000, creates a "permanent partner" family class, and prioritizes refugee family reunification.
Official title: Amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to promote family unity, and for other purposes.
Introduced December 10, 2025 by Mazie Hirono · Last progress December 10, 2025
Increases and restores multiple family- and diversity-based immigrant visa categories, creates a new statutory "permanent partner" classification that allows certain non-married lifelong partners and their qualifying children to be treated as family for immigration purposes, and makes procedural changes to prioritize family reunification for refugees. It recaptures unused family- and employment-based visa numbers from prior years into the annual worldwide limits, raises the diversity visa cap, preserves certain previously‑selected diversity visas lost to travel bans or COVID restrictions, and directs the State and Homeland Security Departments to streamline refugee family reunification processing.