The Nuclear Family Priority Act redefines immediate relatives for immigration, caps family-sponsored visas, creates a new temporary non-work status for parents of adult U.S. citizens, and makes numerous technical amendments to immigration law.
Jim Banks
Senator
IN
The Nuclear Family Priority Act significantly restructures U.S. family-based immigration by removing parents from the "immediate relative" category and establishing a new annual cap for family-sponsored visas. It also introduces a new, non-work, five-year renewable temporary status for parents of adult U.S. citizens, contingent on the citizen child providing health insurance. Furthermore, the bill makes numerous technical amendments, including prioritizing 75% of family visas to be exempt from per-country limits and locking in an applicant's age for status determination at the time of petition filing.
Nuclear Family Priority Act: Parents of U.S. Citizens Lose Green Card Priority, Face 5-Year Temporary Status
The “Nuclear Family Priority Act” fundamentally reworks how U.S. citizens can sponsor their parents for immigration, making a massive shift that will affect thousands of families. Essentially, this bill pulls the rug out from under parents of adult U.S. citizens who were previously classified as “immediate relatives”—the fastest track to a Green Card. Under this new legislation (SEC. 2), immediate relative status is narrowed to only include spouses and children, pushing parents into a much slower, lower-priority family-sponsored category.
The New Deal for Parents: 5 Years, No Work, No Benefits
Instead of a direct path to permanent residency, the bill creates a brand-new, highly restricted nonimmigrant status for parents of U.S. citizens who are 21 or older (SEC. 6). If a parent gets this visa, they are authorized to stay for five years, with the possibility of renewal, but the fine print is tough. This status explicitly prohibits the parent from working in the U.S. and bars them from receiving any public benefits—Federal, State, or local. Think of it as a mandatory, long-term visit visa rather than a step toward citizenship.
Crucially, this new status puts a heavy financial burden squarely on the U.S. citizen child. That child must commit to being financially responsible for supporting the parent for the entire duration of their stay. And here’s the kicker: the U.S. citizen must secure health insurance for the parent that covers the entire stay, and the parent cannot pay for it themselves. If you’re a young professional already juggling student loans and rising rent, suddenly taking on full financial and healthcare responsibility for a parent, even if that parent has their own money, is a huge and mandatory obligation.
The Retroactive Invalidations and Visa Cap Changes
For those already in the pipeline, Section 7 contains a nasty surprise: any petitions filed under family categories that this new law eliminates are considered invalid if they were filed after the date the bill was first introduced in the Senate. This means families who followed the rules and filed their paperwork, perhaps years ago, could find their applications tossed out simply because they filed too late in the legislative process. This move effectively penalizes people retroactively for using a legal pathway that existed at the time of filing.
In terms of overall numbers, the bill sets a new base cap of 88,000 for family-sponsored immigrant visas globally (SEC. 4), replacing the current, more complex calculation. While the overall effect of this change depends on the subtraction formula used, it signals a tightening of the numbers available for all family categories. On a positive note, Section 5 makes a technical but important change for applicants who are children: their age for status adjudication will now be locked in at the time of filing, preventing them from “aging out” during long processing delays. However, this small benefit is overshadowed by the major restructuring of parent sponsorship and the creation of a highly restricted, temporary status.