Break the Chain Act
Latest action · Feb 27, 2025 Referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.
Progress
Where this bill reached, and when. A stage with no date was not reached; one that failed a vote and later carried shows the date it carried.
- IntroducedFeb 27, 2025
- Passed HouseNot reached
- Passed SenateNot reached
- To the PresidentNot reached
- Became lawNot reached
Summary
Break the Chain Act
This bill makes various changes related to family-sponsored immigration, such as narrowing the definition of what constitutes an immediate relative and lowering the annual numerical cap on certain classes of family-sponsored visas.
A non-U.S. national (alien under federal law) who is a parent of a U.S. citizen shall not qualify for a visa for immediate relatives, which is not subject to any direct numerical limits. Currently, the spouses, unmarried children under 21, and parents of citizens are considered immediate relatives.
The bill also reduces the baseline annual cap for family-sponsored visas from 480,000 to 87,934, and revises the methods for calculating the cap. Currently, the 480,000 cap may be adjusted depending on various factors but shall not be less than 226,000. A spouse or child of a sponsoring lawful permanent resident (also known as a green card holder) shall be subject to the family-sponsored visa cap.
The bill revises the rules for determining whether a non-U.S. national is a child for the purposes of family-sponsored immigration, and establishes that an individual who is married or turns 25 years old prior to a visa becoming available for issuance shall not qualify as a child.
The bill creates a nonimmigrant classification for non-U.S. national parents of adult U.S. citizens, which authorizes such parents for admission into the United States for an initial five-year period. Such parents shall not be authorized for employment or to receive any public benefits.
Cosponsors
Members who signed on, in the order they did.
Actions 2
Everything that happened, newest first.
- Feb 27, 2025Introduced in House
- Feb 27, 2025Referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary.
Subjects
Assigned by the Library of Congress. Policy area: Immigration.
Text 1
Each version as it was printed, newest first.
- Feb 27, 2025Introduced in House
Everything here is as published by Congress: the summary is the Congressional Research Service's, the action wording is the clerks', and the subjects are the Library of Congress's. How far it got is read from the actions themselves, taking the most recent one of each kind, so a bill that failed a vote and later passed is shown as having passed. Records come from this bill on Congress.gov and govinfo.gov.