Sponsor
David Schweikert
Representative · R-AZ
Representative · R-AZ
Official title: To amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to establish a skills-based immigration points system, to focus family-sponsored immigration on spouses and minor children, to eliminate the Diversity Visa Program, to set a limit on the number of refugees admitted annually to the United States, and for other purposes.
Introduced May 15, 2025 by David Schweikert · Last progress May 15, 2025
The bill reshapes U.S. immigration toward larger, merit‑and investment‑centered flows with more predictability and enforcement tools but does so by narrowing longstanding family‑based and lottery pathways, raising equity, humanitarian, administrative, and privacy trade‑offs.
Prospective high‑skilled immigrants and their families gain a large, clearer merit-based pathway (about 193,000 visas annually) with transparent ranking, periodic review, and family derivation, making legal immigration for high‑scoring applicants more predictable.
Federal agencies, resettlement partners, and visa planners get clearer statutory structure, reporting requirements, and fixed caps (e.g., refugee cap, family cap rules, updated cross‑references), improving transparency and predictability for annual planning.
Higher‑paying employers and higher‑paid H‑1B applicants benefit from predictable annual H‑1B cap mechanics (minimum floor, supplemental releases tied to timing) that increase chances for higher‑paid petitions and reduce some year‑to‑year volatility.
Millions of prospective immigrants lose a major entry route because the Diversity Visa lottery is eliminated and several family‑preference pathways are cut, substantially narrowing legal immigration opportunities for applicants who relied on those routes.
Parents of U.S. citizens and many 18–20‑year‑olds lose or sharply curtail pathways to green cards because parents are no longer immediate relatives and the definition of 'child' is reduced to under 18, delaying or preventing family reunification.
The new merit/points system and related rules favor highly educated, English‑proficient, high‑salary, or wealthy applicants and impose fees and a 5‑year ban on federal means‑tested benefits, disadvantaging lower‑skilled, lower‑income immigrants and applicants from less‑advantaged countries.
Based on analysis of 10 sections of legislative text.
Rewrites major parts of the INA: creates a 25,000/year investor visa, eliminates the Diversity Visa, caps refugees at 50,000, narrows family categories, creates a points‑based cap, changes H‑1B rules, and expands enforcement.
Creates a new investor visa category that makes 25,000 immigrant visas available annually for qualifying large investors through FY2026–FY2035, overhauls how immigrant visa numbers are allocated by shifting to a points-based system and changing H‑1B allocation mechanics, narrows family‑based immigration categories and child/"immediate relative" definitions, caps refugee admissions at 50,000 per year, eliminates the Diversity Visa program, tightens naturalization sponsor repayment rules, restricts approval of many foreign student visa schools to primarily in-person instruction, and requires DHS use of AI to find visa overstays. Overall the bill restructures major parts of the Immigration and Nationality Act and changes visa caps, allocations, enforcement tools, and eligibility definitions across employment, family, refugee, investor, student, and H‑1B programs.