The EAGLE Act of 2025 is a bipartisan House bill that would eliminate the 7% per-country cap on employment-based green cards and raise the family-sponsored per-country cap from 7% to 15%. Introduced as H.R. 3366 on May 13, 2025, the bill does not add a single green card to the annual supply.1Congress.gov. H.R.3366 – EAGLE Act of 2025 It changes how the existing pool gets divided among applicants from different countries.
What the Bill Would Change
Two changes sit at the center of the legislation.
For employment-based green cards, the 7% per-country ceiling disappears entirely. In its place, applications would be processed in the order they were filed, using each applicant’s priority date. Your priority date is set when your employer files the Form I-140 immigrant petition or the labor certification, whichever comes first. Country of birth stops determining your place in line.
For family-sponsored green cards, the per-country cap survives but doubles, going from 7% to 15%. All five family preference categories are affected: unmarried adult children of U.S. citizens (F1), spouses and minor children of permanent residents (F2A), unmarried adult children of permanent residents (F2B), married children of U.S. citizens (F3), and siblings of U.S. citizens (F4).2U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Green Card for Family Preference Immigrants
The annual totals do not move. Employment-based visas stay at roughly 140,000 per year, and family-sponsored visas stay at their statutory minimum of 226,000.3U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Visa Availability and Priority Dates Everything the bill does happens inside those existing numbers.
Why the Current 7% Cap Creates a Problem
Federal law caps immigrant visas at 7% per country in each preference category per fiscal year.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1152 – Numerical Limitations on Individual Foreign States A country sending 500 qualified applicants and a country sending 500,000 qualified applicants get the same slice.
For India and China, that math produces backlogs measured in decades. Projections cited in the file suggest some Indian nationals in the EB-2 and EB-3 categories could wait more than 50 years under current law. At the same time, visa numbers allocated to countries with fewer applicants sometimes go unused, shrinking what the system actually delivers.
The Department of State would need to shift how it publishes the monthly Visa Bulletin. Country-specific cutoff dates for employment-based categories would eventually collapse into a single worldwide cutoff, with the oldest pending applications processed first regardless of nationality.
How the Transition Would Work
The switch to a first-come, first-served employment system does not happen overnight. The bill phases the change in over nine fiscal years.
During that window, a portion of EB-2 and EB-3 visas is set aside for applicants from countries other than the two with the highest demand. The Secretary of State identifies those two nations at the start of each fiscal year. An additional 5.75% of EB-2 and EB-3 visas is reserved during each of the nine years for applicants from non-high-demand countries.5Congress.gov. H.R.3648 – EAGLE Act of 2022 – Text The reservations shrink over time. By the end of the ninth year, every employment-based visa is issued on a purely date-based basis with no country allocation left.
The point of the phase-in is to keep applicants from smaller countries from getting shut out during the years the existing Indian and Chinese backlog is being worked down.
What It Means for People Stuck in the Queue
The wait itself is only part of the harm the backlog does. Employment-based applicants usually hold temporary work visas tied to a specific sponsoring employer. That tie limits their ability to change jobs, negotiate pay, or accept promotions without putting their place in the green card line at risk.6Congress.gov. U.S. Employment-Based Immigration Policy Spouses may not have work authorization. Children risk losing dependent eligibility if they turn 21 before the family reaches the front of the line.
The Child Status Protection Act of 2002 lets applicants subtract the time a petition sat pending from a child’s biological age, but that adjustment often is not enough when the underlying wait runs 15 or 20 years. A child who ages out becomes removable at 21 unless they can independently qualify for another visa, even if they grew up in the United States and attended school here.6Congress.gov. U.S. Employment-Based Immigration Policy By shortening waits in the most backlogged categories, the EAGLE Act would indirectly reduce how many children age out. Whether the bill contains specific aging-out protections or leaves them to amendments is still being worked out in the legislative discussion.
The Main Criticism
Because the total number of employment-based visas does not change, the redistribution is zero-sum. Every additional visa going to an Indian or Chinese national is one fewer visa going to an applicant from somewhere else.
Roughly 75% of current employment-based visa applications come from India and China. The Congressional Research Service has said that eliminating the ceiling “would increase access to the annual number of EB green cards for Indian and Chinese nationals and reduce it in equal measure for prospective EB immigrants from all other countries.”6Congress.gov. U.S. Employment-Based Immigration Policy Applicants from countries that currently face little or no wait could suddenly face significant delays.
Critics have also questioned whether shorter waits would simply attract more applicants from currently backlogged countries, refilling the queue as it drains. Some opponents have argued the bill disproportionately benefits the technology sector and large H-1B sponsors rather than improving the system broadly. Supporters respond that the current system penalizes people for where they were born rather than their qualifications, and that the transition reservations were designed specifically to address the crowding-out concern.
Where the Bill Stands Now
H.R. 3366 was introduced in the House on May 13, 2025, and referred to committee.1Congress.gov. H.R.3366 – EAGLE Act of 2025 A separate but related bill, the Fairness for High-Skilled Americans Act of 2025 (H.R. 2315), was introduced in March 2025 with similar per-country cap reform goals.
Earlier versions of the EAGLE Act have moved through the House before. The 117th Congress version cleared the House in 2022. The bill has never passed both chambers. To become law it needs a majority vote in the House and the Senate followed by the President’s signature; the President has ten days (Sundays excluded) to sign or veto a bill that reaches the White House.7Library of Congress. ArtI.S7.C2.1 Overview of Presidential Approval or Veto of Bills Senate passage has historically been the harder step, where procedural rules can require 60 votes to advance legislation past a filibuster.
Per-country cap reform has been introduced in various forms across multiple Congresses, and the pattern has been House movement followed by Senate inaction. As of mid-2025, the bill is in its earliest legislative stages.