This private bill makes Luana S. Cordeiro eligible for an immigrant visa or adjustment to lawful permanent resident status notwithstanding INA provisions that would otherwise block admission or adjustment.
It instructs DHS to rescind any outstanding removal or inadmissibility findings reflected in agency records and prevents the beneficiary’s parents and siblings from receiving family-preference benefits by virtue of the relationship.
The bill conditions relief on filing the appropriate immigrant visa or adjustment application with fees within two years of enactment, directs the State Department to reduce the applicable country’s immigrant visa numbers by one upon grant, and references a PAYGO budgetary statement. For counsel and agency staff, the text creates a short, administrable pathway tied to precise record-based waivers rather than individualized adjudicative findings.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill makes a named individual eligible for an immigrant visa or adjustment of status under INA sections 204 or 245, waives any grounds of inadmissibility or removability reflected in DHS or State Department records as of enactment, and requires DHS to rescind any outstanding removal or deportation orders. It obligates the applicant to file within two years and directs the Secretary of State to reduce immigrant visas for the beneficiary’s birth country by one if relief is granted.
Who It Affects
Directly affected parties are Luana S. Cordeiro, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) responsible for adjudication and rescission, and the Department of State consular corps managing immigrant visa statistics. The beneficiary’s parents and siblings are explicitly barred from receiving family-preference benefits under the INA as a consequence of this bill.
Why It Matters
As a private bill, it bypasses ordinary statutory bars by tying relief to agency record entries and a fixed filing window, creating a narrow precedent for record-based waivers and removals of deportation orders. Practitioners and agency compliance officers should note the operational steps (rescissions, consular instructions, visa-number adjustment) and the limited, quota-impacting nature of the remedy.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill grants individualized relief to one named person by creating statutory eligibility for an immigrant visa or adjustment to lawful permanent residence even if the Immigration and Nationality Act would otherwise block admission or adjustment. It does not create a new immigrant classification; instead, it says that Luana S.
Cordeiro ‘‘shall be eligible’’ to seek an immigrant visa under section 204 or to apply for adjustment under section 245, provided she files the required application and pays the fees within two years of enactment.
Crucially, the bill operates on the basis of existing agency records: it prevents removal, denial of admission, or denial of LPR status ‘‘by reason of any ground for removal or denial of admission that is reflected in the records of the Department of Homeland Security or the Visa Office of the Department of State’’ as of enactment, and it directs DHS to rescind any outstanding removal or deportation orders or findings of inadmissibility that were entered for those recorded reasons. In practice, that requires DHS and DOS to review their files, cancel orders where appropriate, and accept the statutory eligibility when an appropriate petition or adjustment application is filed.The text contains practical constraints: the applicant must file the immigrant visa petition or adjustment application with the required fees within two years; if she entered the United States before that filing deadline, the bill treats her as having ‘‘entered and remained lawfully’’ and, if otherwise eligible, as eligible to adjust status as of enactment.
Once an immigrant visa or LPR status is granted, the Secretary of State must instruct a one-visa reduction against the country-of-birth cap for the current or next fiscal year. The bill also denies parents and siblings of the beneficiary any preferential status under the INA by virtue of that relationship.
Finally, the bill asks that PAYGO budgetary effects be determined by a separate House Budget Committee statement for printing in the Congressional Record.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill makes Luana S. Cordeiro eligible to file an immigrant visa petition under INA §204 or an adjustment of status application under INA §245 despite statutory bars that would normally apply.
It bars removal, denial of admission, or denial of LPR status based on any grounds of inadmissibility or removability that appear in DHS or State Department records as of the date of enactment.
The Secretary of Homeland Security must rescind any outstanding removal/deportation orders or findings of inadmissibility entered against the beneficiary for those recorded grounds.
The beneficiary must file the required immigrant visa petition or adjustment application with appropriate fees within two years of enactment (the bill conditions relief on that filing deadline).
When an immigrant visa or permanent residence is granted, the Department of State must reduce by one the total number of immigrant visas available to natives of the beneficiary’s country of birth, and the beneficiary’s parents and siblings are explicitly barred from claiming family-preference benefits by virtue of the relationship.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Eligibility for immigrant visa or adjustment
This subsection creates statutory eligibility by overriding subsections (a) and (b) of INA §201 and expressly authorizes issuance of an immigrant visa or adjustment to LPR upon filing a section 204 petition or a section 245 adjustment application. Practically, it means USCIS or a consular officer must accept a qualifying filing from the beneficiary even if numeric limits or classification language in §201 would otherwise complicate processing; the filing must still follow regular procedural requirements and fee payments.
Retroactive lawful-entry treatment for pre-filing entrants
If the beneficiary is physically present in the U.S. before the filing deadline, this subsection treats her as having ‘‘entered and remained lawfully’’ and makes her eligible for adjustment under INA §245 as of enactment, provided she is otherwise eligible. That produces a retroactive fix to status that typically would require overcoming unlawful entry bars or accrual-of-unlawful-presence issues in ordinary adjudications.
Record-based waiver and rescission mandate
This part does two things: it prevents DHS or consular officers from using any grounds of inadmissibility/removability reflected in their records on enactment to block the beneficiary, and it instructs DHS to rescind any related outstanding removal or deportation orders. The waiver is limited to what is ‘‘reflected in the records’’ at enactment, not to future-documented conduct; implementation will require agency review of case files and formal rescission actions.
Two-year filing window and fee requirement
Subsections (a) and (b) apply only if the immigrant visa petition or adjustment application is filed with the appropriate fees within two years after enactment. The provision imposes a clear statute-of-limit for taking advantage of the statutory eligibility and shifts risk to the beneficiary and her counsel to meet that deadline and pay required fees; it does not authorize fee waivers or exempt the applicant from regular filing requirements.
Visa-number charge and bar on parents/siblings benefits
Section 1(e) instructs the Secretary of State to reduce by one the number of immigrant visas available to natives of the beneficiary’s birth country in the current or next fiscal year, operationalizing quota compliance. Section 1(f) expressly denies the beneficiary’s natural parents, brothers, and sisters any rights or preferences under the INA by virtue of their relationship — a limit on derivative or chain-migration effects that policymakers sometimes include in private-relief bills.
PAYGO budgetary reference
Section 2 does not state dollar amounts but requires that the budgetary effects be determined by reference to a House Budget Committee statement titled ‘‘Budgetary Effects of PAYGO Legislation’’ submitted for the Congressional Record prior to a passage vote. The provision leaves the actual fiscal accounting to that separate statement rather than embedding costs in the bill text.
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Who Benefits
- Luana S. Cordeiro — obtains a legislatively created pathway to an immigrant visa or LPR status, relief from removal, and a rescission of outstanding deportation findings reflected in agency records.
- Immigration counsel and accredited representatives handling the filings — they gain a clearly time-limited case with a statutory basis for acceptance and associated fee revenue for filing and advocacy services.
- Any U.S.-based spouse or qualifying immediate children of the beneficiary (if present) — while not mentioned explicitly, they may obtain derivative or subsequent immigration benefits more readily once the beneficiary becomes a lawful permanent resident.
- Department of State consular officers and visa-adjudication staff — they receive an explicit instruction to issue or reduce visa numbers in one case, which clarifies consular action and removes ambiguity about quota charging.
Who Bears the Cost
- Department of State — must reduce the country-of-birth immigrant visa allocation by one for the current or next fiscal year, producing a minor shift in visa availability that impacts others on the same country’s waiting lists.
- Department of Homeland Security/USCIS — must review records, rescind orders where applicable, and adjudicate an adjustment petition or approve a petition that ordinarily would have been barred, creating administrative workload.
- The beneficiary’s natural parents and siblings — the bill expressly bars them from receiving family-preference benefits as a consequence of the beneficiary’s relief, removing a pathway they otherwise might have had under the INA.
- Potential petitioners and applicants competing for limited visa numbers from the same country — the single-visa reduction slightly reduces available slots and can affect priority dates at the margins.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central tension is between providing narrow, case-specific relief to correct an individual’s immigration outcome and preserving uniform application of the INA and visa-allocations: the bill solves one person’s statutory obstacles quickly but does so by overriding ordinary admissibility adjudication and charging the visa quota — a remedy that is administratively tidy for the beneficiary but raises questions about precedent, record-definition, and fairness to other applicants.
The bill’s waiver language is tightly tethered to ‘‘grounds . . . reflected in the records’’ of DHS or the Visa Office at enactment, which creates implementation questions: agencies must determine whether recorded information is sufficiently specific to identify the exact statutory ground being waived, and whether clerical or incomplete records could be swept into the waiver. That approach avoids a case-by-case moral or discretionary inquiry, but it forces administrative record-review and produces potential disputes over what the agency file actually shows.
The measure also creates a tension between individualized relief and system integrity. It directs DHS to rescind removal orders without requiring the normal adjudicative process that would examine current fitness for admission or public-safety considerations; that could prompt litigation or requests for additional administrative review in particular cases.
The visa-number reduction and the explicit bar on parents and siblings limit chain-migration and quota effects, but they leave open whether spouse and children are affected and how derivative claims should be treated in practice. Finally, Section 2 delegates PAYGO accounting to a separate House Budget Committee statement rather than providing cost estimates in statute, leaving the budgetary baseline and fiscal offset questions external to the text and potentially opaque to implementers.
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