The Reuniting Families Act overhauls the immigration system to drastically reduce visa backlogs, recognize permanent partnerships, expand diversity visas, and expedite the reunification of refugee families.
Judy Chu
Representative
CA-28
The Reuniting Families Act is comprehensive legislation designed to significantly reform U.S. immigration by reducing massive visa backlogs and prioritizing family reunification across various categories. It achieves this by recapturing unused visas, reclassifying certain family members as "immediate relatives," and creating new pathways for permanent partners and refugees to join their loved ones. Ultimately, the bill aims to keep families together, speed up legal immigration processes, and address past discrimination in the visa system.
Immigration Overhaul: New Act Clears Visa Backlogs, Recognizes Permanent Partners, and Protects Families from Deportation
The “Reuniting Families Act” is a major legislative effort to fix what has become a slow-motion disaster in U.S. immigration: the massive backlog for family-based visas. The bill’s core move, detailed in Title I, is recapturing unused visas from previous years—think of it as clearing out decades of bureaucratic clutter—to immediately increase the annual supply of green cards. Crucially, it reclassifies spouses, permanent partners, and minor children of current green card holders (Lawful Permanent Residents) as “immediate relatives.” This is huge because immediate relatives are exempt from annual visa caps, meaning hundreds of thousands of people currently stuck in multi-year queues would suddenly have a much faster path to reunification.
The End of the Line for Waiting Families
For anyone sponsoring a spouse or child who is currently a green card holder, this change is a game-changer. Right now, if you are a U.S. citizen, your spouse and minor children get priority. If you are a green card holder, your family gets stuck in a line that can take years, sometimes separating families for a decade or more. Title I wipes out that distinction for the most immediate family members, effectively putting them in the fast lane. Furthermore, the bill locks in a child’s age on the day the petition is filed, protecting them from “aging out” (turning 21) and losing their eligibility if the government takes too long to process the paperwork. This provides a critical safety net for parents trying to keep their family together while navigating slow bureaucracy.
Recognizing Modern Relationships
Title II, the “Uniting American Families Act,” addresses a significant gap in current law by creating a new legal category for “permanent partners.” This is designed for people in committed, lifelong relationships—including same-sex couples—who cannot legally marry for immigration purposes. The bill extends all family-based immigration benefits, processes, and responsibilities to these permanent partners and their children, treating them exactly the same as spouses under the law. This means a U.S. citizen could sponsor their permanent partner for a green card, providing stability and certainty to binational couples who have been living in legal limbo.
Stability and Second Chances
Beyond just speeding up the process, the bill adds stability. Title I provides relief by protecting applicants from deportation while their family-based petitions are pending. This prevents the tragic scenario where a family member is removed from the country while waiting for the government to approve their legal pathway. The bill also raises the per-country cap for visas from 7% to 20%, which will significantly reduce the wait times for applicants from countries like India, China, or the Philippines, where demand currently far outstrips the supply under the old caps.
Title III focuses on promoting diversity and fairness by increasing the annual number of Diversity Visas from 55,000 to 80,000. More importantly, it grants a second chance to individuals who were selected for the Diversity Visa lottery but were blocked from receiving their visas due to previous travel bans (like those issued under Executive Orders 13769 and 13780) or COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. This is a direct remedy for people who won the lottery but were denied their prize due to policy shifts outside their control.
The Practical Challenge of New Authority
While the bill is overwhelmingly beneficial for families, Title I does grant officials new, broad authority to waive grounds for denying entry or deportation for humanitarian reasons or to keep families united. This power is intended to be a safety valve, preventing family separation over technicalities. However, any time a law creates broad, new discretionary authority without extremely specific criteria, there’s a risk of inconsistent application or potential bias. For the average applicant, this means the outcome of their case could depend heavily on the individual officer reviewing their waiver request, emphasizing the need for clear guidelines as this section is implemented.