Policy & Research/Policy Brief/News/Immigration/Pathway
Keeping American Families Together
Parole in Place for Undocumented Spouses of U.S. Citizens
UPDATE 11/8/24: A federal judge has ruled against the Keeping Families Together program, declaring that the administration does not have authority to issue parole in place under this program. We are waiting for more updates. For now, applications are not being processed.
In 2024, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) established the Keeping Families Together process, expanding access to parole in place for as many as half a million long-term undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens, according to FWD.us estimates. Recipients of parole in place would be protected temporarily from deportation, be able to apply for legal work authorization, and could potentially complete their application process for lawful permanent residency. These smart and important steps would help keep two million American family members together, including up to 50,000 undocumented children and young adults in these families.
This long-standing legal authority would provide relief, support, and opportunity for hundreds of thousands of mixed-status American families across the United States.
Keeping American Families Together
On June 18, 2024, DHS announced that certain undocumented immigrants who are married to U.S. citizens would be eligible to apply for parole in place. The use of this long-standing legal authority would provide relief, support, and opportunity for hundreds of thousands of mixed-status American families across the United States.
Applications for the Keeping Families Together parole in place process opened on August 19, 2024. However, legal challenges have halted the processing of any applications. For more information, please visit InformedImmigrant.com/PIP.
To qualify for relief, individuals must:
- Be married to a U.S. citizen
- Have lived in the U.S. for at least ten years
- Have originally entered the U.S. without admission or parole
- Be able to satisfy any other legal requirements.
Eligible individuals are able to apply for protections for their children.
Applicants are required to submit supporting evidence to demonstrate they meet these criteria, and to pay a fee of $580. As with all parole requests, applications are considered case by case. Applicants may be denied if they have been convicted of certain crimes, or if they are determined to be a threat to national security, public safety, or border security.
Recipients would be protected from deportation and could apply for work authorization, similar to successful programs like military parole in place or DACA. Protections and work permits would generally last for up to three years, unless renewals are authorized in the future. During this time, parole recipients would be able to file to adjust status to permanent residency through sponsorship from their U.S. citizen spouse.
The 500,000 undocumented spouses who qualify for the administration’s new parole in place process have lived in the U.S. for 23 years on average.
Hundreds of Thousands of American Families Across the Country Could Benefit
According to FWD.us estimates, as many as 500,000 undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens could meet the basic eligibility requirements for Keeping Families Together.1
These individuals are a subset of the some 1.1 million undocumented people in the U.S. who are married to a U.S. citizen. On average, the 500,000 undocumented spouses who qualify for the new parole in place process have lived in the U.S. for 23 years, are 40 years old, and have been married to their U.S. citizen spouses for many years.
Nearly 1.4 million U.S. citizens live in this type of mixed-status families that qualify for this relief, including more than 600,000 children. In all, when including those eligible for parole, 2 million U.S. residents would be directly impacted. Some 90,000 of these undocumented spouses are DACA recipients, and about 245,000 are Dreamers, immigrants who arrived in the U.S. before they were 18.
Source: FWD.us analysis of 2022 American Community Survey data, using this methodology for the assignment of immigrant status. Only states with 1,000 or more eligible individuals are included.
Protections through parole in place could shield hundreds of thousands of mixed-status families from family separation. People living in the U.S. without documentation are always at risk of deportation, even if they are married to a U.S. citizen or have U.S. citizen children and have lived in the U.S. for a long time. That risk is significantly increased for immigrants living in states that have implemented aggressive anti-immigrant policies, like SB4 in Texas, which purposefully targets undocumented residents. Their removal and separation from their families would cause devastating harm to them, their spouses and children, their communities, and the United States as a whole, with virtually no opportunities for reprieve.
The Keeping Families Together process would provide many thousands of U.S. citizens with some assurance, even if only temporarily, that their spouses and children will be able to remain with them in the country they call home.
Individuals who are likely eligible for parole already contribute an estimated $13.5 billion annually to the U.S. economy in spending power.
Work Authorizations Would Boost Economic Contributions
The majority (81%) of individuals likely eligible for parole in place are already in the labor force, with about two-thirds (67%) working in industries with current labor shortages such as construction, professional and business services, and food and accommodation services.
More than 325,000 undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens already work in labor-short industries.2 But undocumented workers in these and other industries often face barriers to being employed in positions they would be capable of filling if they had a work permit. With work authorizations, they would have greater flexibility to work in positions in industries with greater needs, which would expand their productivity, allow new individuals to enter the labor force, and ease inflationary pressures for everyone in the U.S.
Individuals who are likely eligible for relief through parole in place already contribute an estimated $13.5 billion annually to the U.S. economy in spending power. After securing permanent legal status, many could pursue U.S. citizenship, which would empower them to contribute even more. FWD.us analysis shows that potentially eligible individuals would contribute an additional $6.6 billion annually in spending power to the U.S. economy if they secured citizenship.3
These potentially eligible individuals are already taxpayers. Each year, they pay more than $3.6 billion in federal and payroll taxes and $1.7 billion in state and local taxes. Once they are U.S. citizens, they would be on track to pay an additional $2.6 billion in combined taxes each year.
Being granted parole can resolve some individuals’ entry issues, making them eligible to adjust status in the U.S. and complete their existing pathway to legal status through their U.S. citizen spouse.
Parole in Place Could Unlock a Path to Legal Status
In some cases, parole in place could also unlock a pathway to permanent status by providing relief from immigration bars. If not for the harsh bars that exist, undocumented individuals who are married to U.S. citizens would have access to one of the most direct pathways to securing permanent status—their spouses can sponsor them, and there is no annual numerical limit on the number of green cards available for this group.
Individuals who were not formally admitted or paroled into the U.S., called “entering without inspection,” are generally not eligible to adjust their status here, and instead must depart and reenter lawfully. However, leaving the U.S. can trigger immigration bars that prevent them from returning for many years. The reentry bars can be so extreme—some are permanent—that many families choose not to even pursue this legal option.
Some immediate relatives of U.S. citizens can apply for a provisional unlawful presence waiver, which grants relief from certain bars before they leave the U.S. to complete the process; however, the application process is heavily backlogged, with more than 130,000 applications pending. Even with waivers, individuals are often denied reentry on other grounds, leaving families separated for many years.
Being granted parole can resolve some individuals’ entry issues, making them eligible to adjust status in the U.S. and complete their existing pathway to legal status through their U.S. citizen spouse. They would no longer need reentry waivers, which would reduce backlogs and ease the burden of work on USCIS and the State Department, saving taxpayer money and helping to streamline a system that has been persistently overburdened for decades. It’s important to note that parole would only make them eligible to complete this process in the U.S.—it would not on its own resolve other inadmissibility issues.
Parole is a long-standing authority that helps keep families together and strengthens the economy.See our Immigration Parole Policy Brief for more background.
Parole in Place Is an Existing Existing Legal Authorities
Parole in place allows undocumented individuals who are already in the United States to receive immigration parole, which protects them from deportation for a limited time and offers the opportunity to apply for work authorization
Parole is a long-standing legal authority that helps keep families together and strengthens the economy. Section 212(d)(5)(A) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) authorizes the Secretary of Homeland Security to “in his discretion parole into the United States temporarily under such conditions as he may prescribe only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit any alien applying for admission to the United States.”
Because individuals who are in the U.S. without having been formally admitted are considered “applicants for admission” under the INA, they are eligible for parole. Someone who has been formally admitted, including if they had overstayed their visa, would not be eligible.
The first dedicated parole in place process was a “military parole in place" process that is still used today due to its success. In November 2013, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a policy memorandum asserting that granting parole to undocumented children, parents, and spouses of active duty or retired service members “would generally be an appropriate exercise of discretion,” and that an individual’s direct relationship to a service member “weighs heavily in favor of parole in place.”
More Work To Do, but a Historic and Impactful Step Forward
This announcement of Keeping Families Together marked a historic milestone in improving the lives of hundreds of thousands of Dreamers and American families with undocumented members. The Keeping Families Together Parole in Place program was crafted with the express purpose of supporting families who have built their lives in this country for an average of a quarter century. It is good policy that should be preserved and fully implemented.
At the same time, these measures are not a complete solution to provide a real pathway to permanent status and citizenship, and they do not relieve Congress of its responsibility to pass meaningful bipartisan legislation to strengthen and modernize our immigration system.
Notes
- FWD.us estimates are based on immigration status assignment in the 2022 American Community survey, according to this methodology. Our estimates are conditioned on those who likely entered without inspection, or those with Mexican, Central American, or Caribbean nationalities and likely entered the U.S. without detection at the U.S. southern border. The estimates also filter for those who last entered the U.S. ten or more years ago, or 2014 or earlier. Upward adjustments to account for marriages since 2022 were added, based on previous marriage trends for this population.
- Shorthanded industries are those with 4% or higher job opening rates as of April 2024, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics job openings data.
- Economic contributions are the total spending power of personal income, after estimated federal, state, and local tax payments. Federal taxes are based on federal and payroll tax estimates for market income by household type and household size from the Congressional Budget Office’s 2017 “Distribution of Household Income” report. Estimates do not take into account differences in local taxation rates, but are based on estimated state averages of taxation by income from the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy’s 2018 report, “Who Pays? A Distribution Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States.” Citizenship multipliers and likelihood of filing taxes, based on the national 2018 Survey of Income and Program Participation analysis, were assigned as predicted probabilities to demographic groups based on sex, age, year of immigration, and education.
