The U.S. immigration system has changed in many ways under President Donald Trump, but a more lenient pathway to legal permanent residency described in viral TikToks posts is not among them.
A June 24 TikTok post showed an image of Trump signing an executive order and images of immigrants.
“Starting June 26, a law will go into effect that will allow for applying for permanent residency directly, quickly, and without leaving the country. It’s called the Community Recognition Law,” the TikTok post’s narrator said in Spanish. “Who will be able to benefit? All those who have resided continuously in the United States for at least seven years, regardless of their current immigration status, will not need a sponsor or return to their country of origin.”
(Screenshot of TikTok post.)
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Congress has not passed a new permanent residency law.
“The specific date of June 26, 2025, has no significance in immigration law, and there are no new programs, laws, or policies scheduled to begin on that date,” Gil Guerra, an immigration policy expert at the Niskanen Center think tank, said.
While there are no laws such as the one mentioned in the video, the claim has connections to former, proposed and existing policies.
Rick Su, a University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, immigration law professor, said U.S. law already allows migrants who are legally in the U.S. to file for an “adjustment of status” to transfer from one immigration status to another. This means people legally on temporary visas, such as an H-1Bcan file for a status adjustment if they qualify for legal permanent residency and would be able to get permanent residency without having to leave the U.S.
But adjustment of status is available only to people who were legally admitted into the U.S.
“As a result, what the video says is already possible, but just for legal migrants who qualify for a visa,” Su said.
Veronica Thronson, a Michigan State University clinical law professor, said another provision called “cancellation of removal” allows immigrants to ask immigration judges to “cancel” their deportation. It requires 10 years of continuous U.S. presence, good moral character and proof that if they are deported, the deportation would cause exceptional and extremely unusual hardship to a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident spouse, parent or child.
A provision of the 1994 Immigration and Nationality Act allowed migrants who typically would not qualify for legal permanent residency status — because of the way they entered the U.S. or because they worked in the U.S. without authorization — to apply without having to leave the country, but the program was not renewed after 2001.
Congress has not taken up recent legislative efforts to provide easier pathways to permanent residency, including the 2023 “Dignity Act” by U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar, R-Fla. It would have provided a renewable seven-year legal status to immigrants illegally in the U.S. who have resided and worked in the U.S. for at least five years. After completing that first program, people could join the “redemption program” for five years and then apply for permanent residency.
Former President Joe Biden also tried to offer a pathway to permanent residency for some people in 2024 through the “Keeping Families Together” program. It applied to spouses and stepchildren of U.S. citizens, allowing them to apply for a status adjustment to lawful permanent resident without leaving the U.S. However, a federal court ordered the program to end.
The closest law that has ever been approved based on how long someone has been in the U.S. was under the bipartisan Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986a law signed by President Ronald Reagan that granted legal status to millions of immigrants, including migrant farmers, in the country illegally.
Immigration experts said the TikTok posts were irresponsible.
“People should not play with the hopes and anxieties of immigrants who want desperately to legalize their status, and who are living in fear. It’s cruel,” said Michael Kagan, University of Nevada, Las Vegas immigration clinic director.
Our ruling
A TikTok post said that a new “community recognition law” took effect June 26 allowing people to apply for “permanent residency directly, quickly, and without leaving the country … who have resided continuously in the United States for at least seven years, regardless of their current immigration status.”
That law doesn’t exist.
Some former, proposed and existing policies granted legal status to immigrants in the country illegally, but no current law would do what the TikTok post described.
We rate the claim False.
