Biden announced Tuesday that his administration will, in coming months, allow U.S. citizens' spouses without legal status to apply for permanent residency and eventually citizenship without having to first depart the country for up to 10 years. About 500,000 immigrants may benefit, according to senior administration officials.
To qualify, an immigrant must have lived in the United States for 10 years and be married to a U.S. citizen, both as of Monday. Zúniga's husband is ineligible because he wasn't in the United States.
"Imagine, it would be a dream come true," said Zúniga, who works part-time in her father's transportation business in Houston. "My husband could be with us. We could focus on the well-being of our children."
Every immigration benefit — even those as sweeping as Biden's election-year offer — have cutoff dates and other eligibility requirements. In September, the Democratic president expanded temporary status for nearly 500,000 Venezuelans who were living in the United States on July 31, 2023. Those who had arrived a day later were out of luck.
The Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has shielded hundreds of thousands of people from deportation who came to the United States as young children and is popularly known as DACA, required applicants be in the United States on June 15, 2012 and have been in the country continuously for the previous five years.
About 1.1 million spouses in the country illegally are married to U.S. citizens, according to advocacy group FWD.us., meaning hundreds of thousands won't qualify because they were in the United States less than 10 years.
Immigration advocates were generally thrilled with the scope of Tuesday's announcement, just as Biden's critics called it a horribly misguided giveaway.
Angelica Martinez, 36, wiped away tears as she sat next to her children, ages 14 and 6 — watched Biden's announcement at the Houston office of FIEL, an immigrant advocacy group. A U.S. citizen since 2013, she described a flood of emotions, including regret for when her husband couldn't travel to Mexico for his mother's death five years ago.