# Reuniting Families Act Summary
This legislation makes significant changes to U.S. immigration law to facilitate family reunification and promote diversity in immigration. The bill increases the available family-sponsored visa allocations by raising the baseline from 480,000 to higher levels and recapturing unused visa numbers from fiscal years 1992 through 2023, creating a larger pool for family-based immigration. It reclassifies spouses, permanent partners, and minor children of lawful permanent residents as immediate relatives, eliminating lengthy visa backlogs for these family members.
The bill introduces "permanent partners" as a recognized immigration category alongside spouses, extending immigration benefits to same-sex and unmarried couples in committed relationships who cannot legally marry in their home countries. This includes provisions for derivative status, conditional permanent residency, and citizenship pathways for permanent partners comparable to those for spouses.
The legislation relaxes several immigration barriers, including reducing the grounds for visa denial based on previous removals and misrepresentation, expanding eligibility for cancellation of removal, and extending work authorization to spouses and children of certain visa holders. It also increases diversity visa allocations from 55,000 to 80,000 annually and addresses the impact of recent travel restrictions by allowing applicants previously denied visas to maintain eligibility.
For refugees and asylees, the bill prioritizes family reunification processing and expands who qualifies as family members, including establishing Priority 3 family reunification cases available to all nationalities and requiring refugee family applications to be adjudicated within one year.
Take Action
Your position
Add a comment
to comment on this bill.
Annotate the text
Highlight any passage on the Summary or Full Text tab to attach a note. Annotations appear on the Annotations tab.