I am a U.S. citizen, but my husband is here illegally. We were always told that if he wanted to apply for a green card, he'd have to leave the United States and then he wouldn't be let back in for many years. I heard something about a law that passed in the last days of Clinton's administration, allowing illegal immigrants to pay a penalty fee and apply for their green card in the United States. Does this law help us?
Note to Readers: The following answer was written before April 30, 2001, when the law in question died. Read it to understand the impact of that law -- but realize that if you didn't submit the appropriate application before the 2001 deadline, it's too late to take advantage of this law.
You basically heard right. In 2001, Congress passed what were named the "LIFE" amendments, which brought back to life, for a short time, a section of the immigration law known as "Section 245(i)." Section 245(i) permitted any immigrant, no matter how he'd entered the United States or what other immigration violations he'd committed, to pay a penalty fee and apply for his green card while inside the United States.
To use Section 245(i) based on the LIFE amendments, the immigrant must have been physically present in the United States on the date they were signed, December 21, 2000. The immigrant must also have had a valid visa petition submitted on his behalf by April 30, 2001 (and that petition must ultimately have been approved by the INS, whose name has since changed to U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS)). The penalty fee for qualifying adults was $1,000.
This was a huge benefit: Before Section 245(i), most immigrants living in the United States (in particular those who had crossed the border illegally) had to leave the country and apply for their green card outside the United States at one of its overseas consulates -- a process that was expensive and took many months.
But a couple of years back, in a fit of anti-immigrant spite, Congress not only did away with Section 245(i) but created a neat little trap for immigrants -- anyone who left the United States to apply for their green card would now face penalties for time that they had lived illegally in the United States. Six months spent here illegally would bar you from returning to the United States for three years; a year spent here illegally would bar your return for ten years. Needless to say, your husband and many other would-be green card applicants decided they were better off trying to live here illegally.
Now there are only a few people who can still take advantage of 245(i) -- basically those few who already had a visa petition filed for them during one of the periods while the law was still in effect. Everyone else has to hope that the law will change once again! This topic is complicated, so see Nolo's Fiancé and Marriage Visas for more information on how it applies to you.
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