Sponsors (36)
Introduced June 18, 2025 by Christopher Van Hollen · Last progress June 18, 2025
The bill expands a pathway to permanent residency and work authorization and increases transparency and privacy safeguards for applicants, while creating trade-offs in enforcement complexity, potential deportation risk for denied applicants, limited privacy exceptions, and additional administrative costs.
Eligible immigrants can apply for lawful permanent resident status under a new INA §245B, creating long-term stability and access to public and private benefits.
Immigrants who apply may obtain work authorization while their applications are pending, enabling income, job stability, and reduced reliance on emergency supports.
Applicants receive privacy protections limiting immigration-use of application data and penalties for unauthorized disclosure, which preserves applicant confidentiality and deters misuse of sensitive information.
Immigrants who apply but are later denied risk immediate enforcement: denied applicants can lose stay-of-removal protections and face activation of prior removal orders, increasing deportation risk.
The bill introduces enforcement and legal-complexity risks: broad waivers, allowing applications after prior removals without reopening, centralizing TPS decisions in DHS, and saving-clauses/default definitions could weaken coordination, create enforcement gaps, or produce litigation over ambiguous definitions.
Privacy safeguards are limited: applicant data can still be shared with federal law enforcement for national security or criminal investigations and criminal penalties for improper disclosure may deter legitimate interagency information-sharing, potentially slowing adjudications.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Establishes a new pathway to lawful permanent residency for certain foreign nationals, limits use of application data for immigration enforcement, updates TPS reporting, and sets fees and exemptions.
Creates a new adjustment-of-status pathway allowing specified foreign nationals to apply for lawful permanent resident status, establishes application rules and fee exemptions, and protects most application information from use in routine immigration enforcement. It also requires faster Department of Homeland Security reporting when Temporary Protected Status for a country is terminated and clarifies definitions and DHS authority. The bill sets eligibility guardrails tied to inadmissibility and deportability grounds, provides limited ability for certain removed or departed people to apply from abroad, sets a processing fee cap with exemptions for children, low-income people, and certain vulnerable applicants, and makes improper disclosure of application data a criminally punishable offense (fine up to $10,000).