Jumpstart Act
Priority Bill Spotlight

Green card backlogs are breaking the immigration system

Declining immigration levels, including the near-total collapse of employment- and family-based immigration in recent years, have spurred labor shortages and hindered growth as the U.S. economy continues to recover from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

These declines are due in part to Congress’s failure to meaningfully update existing avenues for immigration in more than 30 years. Outdated numerical caps on the number of visas issued each year have created decades-long backlogs for individuals who have been approved for green cards but must wait until one is available for them.

Because of family-based immigration backlogs, roughly 4 million people with approved green card applications are waiting to be reunited with their family members who are in the U.S. More than 400,000 individuals already living and working in the U.S. on temporary visas are waiting for employment-based green card availability; including their dependent spouses and children, the backlog includes just under 1 million individuals.

The backlogs have been made worse by the government’s failure in past years to issue hundreds of thousands of green cards that were supposed to be available under the annual numerical limitations. Year after year, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has issued fewer green cards than were was authorized, often because of bureaucratic delays and inefficiencies. Even though Congress included statutory language to ensure that green cards not issued in one year would be added to the next year’s available total, the poorly constructed formula has prevented thousands of green cards each year from “rolling over,” meaning the government never issued any of these visas. (For more information and examples about green card waste, read our explainer here).

The Jumpstart Act would recapture nearly 400,000 previously wasted green cards

The Jumpstart our Legal Immigration System Act (H.R. 7374), called the Jumpstart Act, would help reduce green card backlogs by recapturing an estimated 379,000 unused green cards (222,000 for family and 157,000 for employment) that were authorized but never issued since the numerical limits were implemented in 1992. Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) introduced the Jumpstart Act in April 2022.¹

The legislation would not increase immigration levels nor make anyone newly eligible for immigration benefits; rather, it would temporarily increase the number of green cards that can be issued each year until the recaptured pool of green cards is exhausted, so that individuals waiting in backlogs can more quickly receive the green cards for which they have already been approved.

The Jumpstart Act would also fix the formula so that unused green cards in the employment- and family-based categories are not wasted, but instead are carried over and made available to eligible individuals in the following year.

Additionally, the Jumpstart Act would allow individuals who were selected for diversity visas to maintain their eligibility and claim their visas. They were unable to claim them due to the Trump Administration’s immigration, travel, and COVID-19 bans.

Early filing and cap exemption provisions would further reduce backlogs and help families

Importantly, the Jumpstart Act also includes two significant changes to the adjustment of status process for immigrants in the United States who are already approved for green cards and are seeking to adjust from a temporary to a permanent status.

Under current law, individuals who have been sponsored for a green card have to wait for a visa number to become available before they can file to adjust their status and receive the green card. Because of the backlogs, some individuals who have been approved for green cards expect to wait many years, even decades, until a visa number is available for them.

The early filing provision would allow individuals to pay a fee to submit their adjustment of status application before a visa number is available. While this would not change their wait time in the backlogs, it would allow individuals to access the benefits of having applied to adjust their status, including the ability to travel abroad and apply for a work permit that would allow them to change jobs or even employers while waiting for an available visa number. It would also preserve their children’s dependent status, protecting them from aging out and losing status.

The Jumpstart Act would also allow individuals who have waited at least two years since having initially been granted approval for a green card to pay a fee to be exempted from numerical limits on annual green card issuances. This would allow them to bypass the backlog and adjust their status without waiting for an available visa number. Allowing individuals to bypass numerical limits could substantially reduce the backlog because more individuals could adjust than are added to the backlog each year.

Additionally, allowing individuals to bypass numerical limits and adjust status earlier would save USCIS from having to continually process renewals and other benefits for these individuals and their children.