Rep. Vito Fossella is introducing legislation that would expand America’s program that admits some Chinese asylum seekers to this country.

Chinese immigrants who were forcibly sterilized or made to undergo an abortion for violating China’s family planning practices are already eligible for political asylum here.

The Staten Island Republican’s bill, set to be introduced next week, would amend the definition of a refugee to include the spouse of someone who was forcibly sterilized or made to undergo an abortion. Because of concerns about overpopulation, couples in China are generally forbidden from having more than one, or, in some regions, two children.

Currently, a husband or wife of someone who has been forcibly operated on can usually get asylum as a dependent when a couple immigrates together. But in some instances, men seeking to immigrate singly base their asylum applications on the fact that a wife back in China underwent a forced abortion.

Around the country, federal courts have been divided about whether to grant asylum to spouses who did not undergo the procedure themselves. A ruling in a federal appellate court in July reversed New York’s policy on such applications, and spouses in these cases not longer get asylum in New York. Immigration lawyers have estimated that 500 more immigrants in the New York area would be eligible for asylum under Mr. Fossella’s statute.

“I think it’s self-evident that China has a barbaric policy of forced sterilization and abortion, and I think it brutalizes not just the person forced to undergo it but also the spouse,” Mr. Fossella told The New York Sun yesterday. In 2005, Congress lifted what had been a 1,000-person-a-year cap on the number of asylum seekers who would be accepted on claims of forced surgery or sterilization. More asylum seekers arrive in America from China than from any other country.