Congressman Chip Roy introduced the End U Visa Abuse Act on Apr. 30, which aims to eliminate a program designed for alleged crime victims but now described by supporters of the bill as susceptible to fraud and abuse by illegal immigrants.
The issue is significant because critics say the current U visa program undermines immigration law and encourages people to exploit the system. The bill has received support from groups such as Immigration Accountability Project, Federation for American Immigration Reform, and Center for Renewing America.
“The U visa program is a magnet for fraud, allowing illegal aliens to game the system, avoid deportation, and secure work permits they were never meant to have in the first place. This broken program undermines the rule of law and encourages further illegal immigration by allowing immigration lawbreakers to claim they are crime victims to potentially qualify for the visa. Alleged victimization should not be a basis for securing a green card – it’s time we end the fraud-ridden U visa program once and for all,” said Congressman Roy.
Grant Newman, Director of Government Relations at Immigration Accountability Project, said: “The U visa program has become yet another in a line of immigration programs that may have begun as a well-intentioned tool but has since become rife with fraud and abuse. The program has grown by over 500% since 2009, ballooning to a backlog of over 400,000 pending applications. As it stands now, the U visa operates as little more than a de facto amnesty program for illegal aliens who learn how to game the system. Absent a serious effort to reform the program, it should be repealed. IAP applauds Congressman Roy’s End U Visa Abuse Act.”
Cody M. Brown of Codias Law added: “The U visa is the most absurd immigration program ever conceived. The federal government hands illegal aliens—and their entire extended families—a path to U.S. citizenship simply for accusing an American of a crime. No investigation, no prosecution, no conviction required… Representative Roy’s bill ends this madness.”
Roy represents Texas’s 21st district in Congress after replacing Lamar Smith in 2019 according to Wikipedia. He won elections against Kristin Hook in 2024 (61.9% vs 36.1%), Claudia Zapata in 2022 (62.8% vs 37.2%), Wendy Davis in 2020 (52% vs 45.4%), and Joseph Kopser in 2018 (50.2% vs 47.6%) according to Ballotpedia.
Supporters argue that repealing or reforming this legislation could impact how future claims under similar visas are handled.
