Professional and occupational licenses regardless of immigration status, by state (2026): 9 states opened all or most professions, Tennessee reversed course

Professional and occupational licenses regardless of immigration status, by state

The finding: whether a person can be licensed to work — as a nurse, an electrician, a cosmetologist, an accountant — regardless of immigration status is decided state by state, and the reason is a single federal statute. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1621, a professional or commercial license is a “public benefit” that a person who is not lawfully present cannot receive unless the state passed a law after August 22, 1996 that affirmatively opens it (the § 1621(d) opt-out). As of 2026, 9 states opened all or most professions regardless of status, a mix of others opened named professions or work-authorized applicants only, 3 states are classified restrictive (Florida’s classification is contested — its own statute says non-citizenship is not a disqualifier), and the rest have no state opt-out. The most recent states to open all professions were Vermont and Washington, both in 2024; the most recent to move the other way was Tennessee, in 2026.

Every state — the four categories

Under federal law (8 U.S.C. § 1621), a professional or commercial license is a “public benefit” a person who is not lawfully present cannot receive — unless the state passed an opt-out law after August 22, 1996. As of 2026: 9 states opened all or most professions regardless of status; 12 did so for named professions or for work-authorized applicants only; 3 require citizenship or qualified-alien status; and the rest have no state opt-out. Requirements change — confirm with your state licensing board. General information, not legal advice.

The 9 universal-access states

• California — SB 1159 (2014): all professional licenses. Accepts an ITIN in place of a Social Security number.
• Illinois — SB 3109 / Public Act 100-0872 (2018): all professions. Accepts an ITIN in place of a Social Security number.
• Nevada — AB 275 (2019): professional licenses generally. Accepts an ITIN in place of a Social Security number.
• New Jersey — S2455 (2020): professional and occupational licenses generally.
• New Mexico — SB 137 (Laws 2020, ch. 53) → NMSA 1978 § 61-1-35 (2020): occupational or professional licensure or certification generally — an express § 1621(d) affirmation that bars conflicting agency rules.
• Colorado — SB21-077 (2021): all state professional and occupational credentials except a short list (tramway, non-transplant tissue banks, funeral homes and crematories, and private investigators).
• Delaware — SB 80 / Senate Substitute 1 for SB 80 (2023): professional licenses generally (amends Title 29). Accepts an ITIN in place of a Social Security number.
• Vermont — Act 105 / H.606 (2024): professional licenses and certifications regardless of status (50-plus professions). Accepts an ITIN in place of a Social Security number.
• Washington — HB 1889 (ch. 50, Laws of 2024) → RCW 18.415.010 (2024): all businesses and professions under Title 18 RCW (120+ professions), except interstate compacts; carve-outs for private investigators, security guards, and bail bond recovery agents (ch. 18.165/18.170 RCW, RCW 18.185.250). Accepts an ITIN in place of a Social Security number.

Restrictive or contested states

• Alabama — Statute-pinned Jul 2026 from the official Code of Alabama: § 31-13-29 is the operative section naming professional licenses; § 31-13-7 separately bars 8 U.S.C. § 1621 public benefits. Both sections survived the HICA v. Bentley litigation (the permanent injunctions hit other sections) and remain in the current Code. No ITIN pathway — lawful presence verified through SAVE.
• Tennessee — Passed Apr 22, 2026; effective on or about May 7, 2026; amends roughly 30 code titles. Applies to licenses applied for or renewed on or after the effective date, so an EAD/work permit alone no longer qualifies. Narrow physician exception for applicants who prove they have applied for a work-authorizing visa. SECTION 59 separately removed a citizenship requirement from dental-hygiene licensure, so the act is not uniformly restrictive. The 2023 portal snapshot still lists Tennessee “Limited” — superseded here by the enacted statute.
• Florida — Cited both ways. Fla. Stat. § 455.10 (2025): “No person shall be disqualified from practicing an occupation or profession regulated by the state solely because he or she is not a United States citizen” (silent on lawful presence). The Higher Ed Immigration Portal classifies Florida “Restrictive.” Section 455.10 removes citizenship as a bar but predates 8 U.S.C. § 1621 (1996) and does not affirmatively provide eligibility for the unlawfully present, so it does not meet the § 1621(d) opt-out; Florida’s affirmative access (HB 755, 2014) reaches only bar admission under narrow conditions. Presented cite-both, not forced to one label.

Sources: Higher Ed Immigration Portal (national classification), primary state statutes for the universal-access states, and NCSL / CLINIC (historical named-profession detail). Puerto Rico is classified “No State Policy” and noted separately.

What the data shows

• The default is a bar; opening licenses takes a law. Because § 1621 makes a license a public benefit barred to the unlawfully present, a state that does nothing leaves the federal bar in place. Access exists only where a legislature affirmatively acted after 1996.
• Nine states went all the way. California was first, in 2014, followed by Illinois (2018), Nevada (2019), New Jersey and New Mexico (2020), Colorado (2021), Delaware (2023), and Vermont and Washington (2024). Delaware’s law is the cleanest citation of the mechanism — its synopsis says the act brings the state “into compliance with a federal requirement in place since August 22, 1996, under 8 U.S.C.S. § 1621(d).” The scale is real: New Jersey’s 51 licensing boards collectively license roughly 750,000 people across 175 professions.
• The trend also reverses. Tennessee’s 2026 Public Chapter 955 re-imposed a citizenship-or-qualified-alien requirement across roughly 30 code titles, at application and renewal — a rare recent restriction that a national tracker had not yet caught when this page was built.

Why this matters

A professional or occupational license is the gate to a licensed job. In the states that opened their licenses regardless of status, a qualified resident can be credentialed and work in the field they trained for; in the states that did not, the federal bar stands, and the same qualifications cannot be converted into a license. The line does not track a person’s skills — it tracks which state they live in and whether that state’s legislature passed an opt-out law. This dataset is the map of where that line falls, keyed to the statute that draws it.

Two things it deliberately does not do. It does not track each board’s document lists, fees, or exam requirements — those are set by each state’s licensing board and change, so confirm the current rules with the board. And it does not give individualized legal advice or tell anyone whether they personally qualify: it is general procedural information about what each state’s law allows, categorically.

Method and caveats

This is a neutral, per-state classification of whether each of the 50 states and DC has enacted a law under 8 U.S.C. § 1621(d) making professional and occupational licenses available regardless of immigration status, and how broadly, as of 2026. The national classification is taken from the Presidents’ Alliance Higher Ed Immigration Portal, the only current all-jurisdiction tracker, and corrected to the enacting statute where the tracker lagged — most notably Tennessee, which the 2023 portal snapshot lists as “Limited” but which Public Chapter 955 (2026) moves to restrictive; New Mexico (SB 137, 2020) and Washington (RCW 18.415.010, 2024), whose enacted statutes open all or most professions although the portal lists both only “Accessible”; and Wisconsin, whose DACA-only 2025 Act 240 (signed April 2026) postdates the portal snapshot. The nine universal-access states are each pinned to a primary or legislative source; states classified only by the portal cite the portal, not an implied statute.

Three limits are stated plainly. Older trackers are stale — NCSL’s list was last updated in January 2017 and CLINIC’s in August 2019, which is why this dataset leans on statutes and the current portal rather than those tables; NCSL and CLINIC are used only for historical named-profession detail. Scope and requirements vary and change — what counts as covered, and the documentation a board will accept, differ by state; confirm current rules with the licensing board. And this is general information, not legal advice. A few classifications carry a footnote in the data where sources conflict — Florida (whose statute says non-citizenship is not a disqualifier while the portal marks it “Restrictive”), South Dakota and Wyoming (narrow 2015 named-profession laws that the portal treats as “No State Policy”). Puerto Rico is classified “No State Policy” and noted separately, not counted among the 50 states and DC.

Download the data: occupational_license_access.json — all 50 states and DC, each state’s category, the enabling law, ITIN acceptance where sourced, and a source URL per row.

Suggested citation: MigrantUSA, “Professional and occupational licenses regardless of immigration status by state, 2026,” https://migrantusa.com/datasets/professional-licenses-regardless-of-status-by-state/ (accessed [date]).

Embed this widget on your site — free

Newsrooms, worker centers, legal-aid and immigrant-services organizations: drop in the panel below. It shows how many states opened professional licenses regardless of status and lists the universal-access states, and it updates when the law changes.

<iframe src="https://migrantusa.com/embed/occupational-license-access/" width="100%" height="540"
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<p style="font-size:12px">Source: <a href="https://migrantusa.com/datasets/professional-licenses-regardless-of-status-by-state/">MigrantUSA — professional licenses by state</a></p>