Hawaii’s Hirono pushes Reuniting Families Act to reunite families

(Hawaii) U.S. Senator Mazie K. Hirono of Hawaii has introduced a sweeping family-immigration reform bill that she says is aimed at reuniting relatives kept apart for years by long waits and hard caps on green cards, putting a fresh spotlight on a backlog that has left nearly 4 million people with approved family petitions still waiting to join loved ones in the United States 🇺🇸.

Hirono introduced the Reuniting Families Act of 2024 in the Senate on December 4, 2024, alongside Senator Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, according to the bill’s summary. The proposal is designed to “protect families” and overhaul a system that, advocates argue, has not seen major family-based changes in more than three decades, even as the queue of approved applicants has grown and waits have stretched past a decade for many families and into 20 years or longer for some.

At the center of the Reuniting Families Act of 2024 is an attempt to turn the clock back on lost opportunities in the immigration system by capturing green cards that were authorized by Congress but never actually issued. The bill would recapture unused family-sponsored and employment-based immigrant visas that went unused between 1992 and 2023, and it would also roll those visas over into future fiscal years in the same category on an ongoing basis until they are allocated. Supporters say that kind of recapture would treat unused visas as a resource that should not evaporate at the end of a year, particularly when the line of families with approved petitions is so long.

The legislation also targets one of the most common, painful fault lines in family immigration: the distinction between “immediate relatives,” who can get green cards without being counted against annual caps, and other categories that can be forced to wait for years even after approvals. Hirono’s bill would expand who counts as immediate relatives to include spouses, permanent partners, and minor children (under 21) of lawful permanent residents, making them immediately eligible for green cards without being counted under annual caps.

That change, if enacted, would mark a major redefinition of who the system treats as close family. It would also create a federal definition for a relationship category that is not widely recognized in current family-based immigration law. “Permanent partners” are defined in the bill as being in “a committed, intimate relationship,” language meant to include long-term couples who do not meet the existing legal boxes used by immigration agencies.

Another provision aims at a group often caught between bureaucracy and birthdays: children who are in the United States as dependents of long-term visa-holders but can lose their dependent status as they turn 21, even when government backlogs are the reason their family’s case has stalled. The bill would protect “Documented Dreamers” by preventing them from aging out of dependent status while stuck in USCIS backlogs, so they do not lose their place in line or become undocumented solely due to delays.

In practical terms, that means the legislation is attempting to stop a scenario in which a family that has followed the rules for years sees a child pushed into a new, uncertain immigration category simply because the government did not complete processing fast enough. While the source material does not name specific families, the bill’s supporters present this as a form of fairness: children should not pay the price for delays they did not create, particularly when the broader family immigration system is defined by wait times that can span a large part of a person’s life.

The bill would also increase the number of available visas and raise per-country caps, changes that the summary says would particularly benefit families from high-demand countries facing multi-decade waits. Per-country caps limit how many people can receive green cards each year from any single country, regardless of population size or demand, and critics have long argued that the policy creates especially deep backlogs for nationals of certain countries even when their petitions have already been approved.

Hirono and Duckworth’s push comes with a parallel effort in the House of Representatives. The Senate bill’s counterpart is the Reuniting Families Act of 2023 (H.R. 5560), which was reintroduced by Representative Judy Chu, a Democrat from California, on September 19, 2023, according to the same summary. The pairing underscores an attempt to build momentum across both chambers for a package that is broad rather than incremental, at a time when immigration legislation has often stalled or narrowed into enforcement-only measures.

Beyond visa numbers and definitions, the Reuniting Families Act of 2024 would also reach into one of the most fraught parts of the immigration system: deportation cases where families can be split apart by removal orders. The bill would expand Department of Homeland Security discretion to use Cancellation of Removal and other tools to avoid deporting family members where hardship exceptions are appropriate, promoting family unity. Cancellation of Removal is a form of relief in immigration court that, if granted, can allow a person to remain in the United States; expanding discretion would mean widening the circumstances where DHS can choose family unity over deportation, as described in the bill summary.

The context offered by the bill’s backers is stark. The proposal is explicitly framed as a response to an over 4 million-person backlog in family-based immigration, a queue in which many already-approved applicants have been separated from family for 10–20+ years. The summary adds that in some cases

“others will die before they are eligible to be reunited with family,”

a blunt assessment that turns policy debate into a race against time for aging parents, adult children, and spouses waiting abroad.

Supporters describe the package as the most significant reform of the family-based immigration system in more than 30 years, since the Immigration Act of 1990. That reference is not incidental: family-based immigration categories and annual limits are deeply rooted in statutory structures that have remained largely in place for decades, even as migration patterns, family structures, and processing pressures have shifted. By tying the proposal to 1990, advocates are arguing that the current system is built around assumptions that no longer match the reality of today’s demand and delays.

While the bill’s prospects are not laid out in the source material, the details point to a strategy that tries to reduce the backlog from multiple directions at once: reclaiming unused visas from 1992 through 2023, boosting future availability, easing bottlenecks by expanding the definition of immediate relatives, and preventing children from aging out during long waits. Each piece is aimed at a different point where families can get stuck, separated, or pushed into new lines after already spending years in the system.

The proposed changes also land in the daily churn of federal immigration processing, where USCIS backlogs can determine whether a family sees each other in months, years, or decades. For families trying to follow the legal pathway, the most basic questions often come down to whether the system will move faster than their lives do: whether a child will remain eligible, whether a spouse can stay, whether an elderly parent will live to see a long-promised reunion.

For readers trying to understand the current federal process for family-based green cards, USCIS provides official information on eligibility and steps through its Green Card for Family Preference Immigrants page, though the legislation introduced by Hirono and Duckworth would change how some of those categories work if it became law.

In Hawaii, a state shaped by migration and family ties across borders, Hirono’s decision to lead the Senate effort gives the debate a home-state anchor even as the bill addresses a nationwide backlog and a global waiting line. By linking her proposal to Duckworth and to Chu’s House measure, the Reuniting Families Act of 2024 is being positioned not as a narrow fix but as a broad rewrite of how U.S. immigration law treats family unity—an issue that, for nearly 4 million people with approved petitions still waiting, is less an abstract policy goal than a calendar marked by missed milestones and delayed homecomings.