For a Denton couple, a new program for undocumented spouses could offer a clearer future

Natalie Taylor teaches ninth grade biology in Lewisville. After school, she picks up STAAR prep tutoring gigs. On the weekends and come summer, she logs extra hours as an aquatic supervisor at Hawaiian Falls Waterparks.
It’s constant, constant work, Taylor, 23, said. But she knows it’s not going to be like this forever.
It’ll likely be anywhere from a few months to nine years. She’s waiting to cut down her workload until her husband, Oscar Silva, 23, is legally able to work.
“There is a light at the end of the tunnel, you just have to make sure you’re looking at it,” Taylor said.
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A new program might speed the young couple’s odds for a dual-income home and a marriage with a clearer future.
Last month, the Biden administration announced a parole-in-place program that would allow undocumented spouses married to U.S. citizens to stay in the U.S. for up to three years, obtain work authorization and apply for lawful permanent resident status without having to leave the country.
The program could protect as many as an estimated 500,000 people from deportation if they have been in the U.S. for at least 10 years and were married to a citizen as of June 17, 2024.
A mile from the University of North Texas and along a Denton County Transit Authority shuttle line, the young couple share an off-campus apartment. It’s crowded with a collection of PlayStation disc games, alternative band vinyls and small canvas paintings from friends.
Their home reflects how they’ve merged their lives since they were 17.
Born in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, Silva was unlawfully brought to the U.S. at the age of 1.
By the time he reached 16, or a year past the minimum age to apply for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, his family began calling relatives to find his Mexican birth certificate and pool together $500 for the application fee, but new requests to enroll were no longer accepted.
He applied again in 2020, but the program was suspended by a Texas judge. While the designation wouldn’t have led him on a pathway to citizenship, it would have let him work and not fear deportation. The graduate accounting student has no documentation that would allow him access to a work permit.
Immigration advocacy groups like Fwd.us estimate an additional $6.6 billion would be added to the economy and $2.6 billion in combined taxes if undocumented spouses were to become U.S. citizens after utilizing the program to obtain permanent residency and work authorization.
More than 100,000 of the eligible spouses live in Texas, the group estimates. If they were to secure citizenship, they would boost the state economy by $1.5 billion and bring in $512 million in combined taxes.
The program has the potential to have a profound impact on someone who came 15 or 20 years ago to the U.S., married a U.S. citizen and is still without legal status in the U.S., said Charles Gillman, a partner and head of the business immigration department at Gonzalez Olivieri LLC, an immigration law firm in Houston.
It allows that person to get in their car in the morning, go to work and not worry that if they get stopped for a traffic ticket, they’re going to be deported, Gillman said.
It would be transformative for Taylor and Silva.
“She has to support me,” Silva said. “It would relieve us from that burden.”
Taylor and Silva met in a first-year college preparatory class at Lakeview Centennial High School in Garland in 2016. Silva was coming to terms with what it means to be undocumented — he wouldn’t be able to legally get a job or a driver’s license like his friends.
“It brought me to a really dark place within myself,” Silva said. “I was very scared all of the time.”
The two had their first date in the summer before their senior year, spinning on a carousel of swings 400 feet above Six Flags Over Texas. On July 23, 2018, Taylor uploaded a photo of them to her Instagram story. They look young, both with side-swept hair and nearly identical large glasses. “Just wanted to show off my cute new bf,” she wrote, with pink hearts glimmering beside Silva’s head.
After graduating from high school in 2019, they both went to UNT. While Taylor graduated in 2022, Silva is still there as he’s trying to make use of the time while he’s unable to legally work by earning a graduate degree. He graduated in May with a degree in economics and a minor in math and is now pursuing a master’s in accounting.
From the hours spent in her Hawaiian Falls uniform, a tan line divides Taylor’s biceps. She has long dirty blonde hair, a silver nose ring and slight dimples when she smiles. Silva has rich dark hair and a gentle demeanor.
At their Denton apartment, Taylor’s childhood cat Lucy squawks from a living room couch across from Silva’s framed graduation cap painted with an image of the U.S. Capitol building and a bitty orange butterfly.
The couple fears the program will be held up in courts or worse, struck down before it can see the light of day. They’re hoping to not find themselves in familiarly discouraging situations like when Silva went to apply for DACA and the program was disbanded or suspended.
“It’s really hard to get your hopes up about things like this, just because we’ve been burned before,” Taylor said.
The program that has yet to be implemented will likely be met with legal challenges once it’s published in the Federal Register, said Eric Welsh, a partner at California-based Reeves Immigration Law Group.
“I’m sure that opposition will be robust in no small part because this is an election year,” Welsh said.
With immigration a central issue in the 2024 campaign, President Joe Biden announced the parole program two weeks after his announcement to limit entry and restrict asylum.
“It seems like Biden is trying to please two sides,” Welsh said.
These kinds of parole-in-place programs aren’t new. In 2013, the Obama administration implemented a similar case-by-case plan for spouses, parents and children of active military and veterans to move toward becoming permanent residents.
The parole programs are based on a statute in the Immigration and Nationality Act, explained Dallas immigration attorney Dobrina Ustun. That legally differs them from programs like DACA, which was based on an executive order by Obama.
“It probably will face a better future than DACA just because it’s within regulations,” Ustun said. “But we’ll just have to wait and see.”
For parole to be offered, there must be reasons of urgent humanitarian need or significant public benefit. For the new program, it’s the latter, Ustun said.
The people eligible for this program have made lives with their spouses, their children are usually U.S. citizens and they have an extended family of U.S. citizens, Gillman said.
If the program does launch, Welsh imagines a rollout could be as straightforward as making an appointment at an office, arriving with a select list of documents, meeting with an officer and signing a form.
Gillman warns people to be realistic.
“This may turn up to be a good long-term opportunity for people who are spouses to U.S. citizens to legalize, but the ultimate path is uncertain,” Gillman said, given the time it might take for the program to make its way through the courts.
Silva and Taylor will wait for years if they have to. The couple is gathering documents to file an I-601A waiver. It’s a provisional unlawful presence waiver, which requests United States Citizenship and Immigration Services forgive time Silva spent in the U.S without legal status and grant him an interim waiver to adjust his immigration status based on a family relationship.
In Silva’s case, the adjustment is tied to his marriage to Taylor.
The estimated wait time for most of these applications to be processed is within 43 months, according to the USCIS Case Processing Times. Silva would then have to return to Mexico to interview for residency.
It’s not bulletproof. Because Silva was brought to the U.S. without inspection, he began accruing illegal status once he became an adult. With more than 180 days of unlawful presence, if he were to leave the U.S., he would have a 10-year bar from reentering the country.
So if after an interview at the consulate, an immigration officer denies his provisional waiver, Silva could have to stay abroad until the 10-year timeframe expires. If he were to be approved, he would be able to return to the U.S.
If Silva were to file the waiver next month, wait the estimated 43 months for processing, do a consulate interview, be denied his waiver and trigger the 10-year bar, it would be almost 14 years before he would be eligible to reapply.
“If I had to spend a decade separated from my wife, it would affect us in dramatic ways,” Silva said. “I don’t know anything about Mexico.”
Before Welsh recommends a client leave the country for a consulate interview in their country of origin, it’s his duty, he said, to do a very firm due diligence and have a great deal of confidence that his client is coming back.
“This is a very tough thing,” Welsh said. “This is something that I think a rational person would struggle with, because it’s a risk assessment that you’ve got to make.”
Welsh is fielding daily calls from a client whose case was approved more than a month ago, but still hasn’t received their passport back.
For months, people didn’t know Taylor and Silva were married at the Dallas County Courthouse in February 2022. It was just them, some friends and some family.
“We kind of had that secret for us,” Taylor said.
A few months into their marriage, they began the process of getting Silva a green card. It took nearly 14 months to get the first step approved.
The couple plans to have their big, grand wedding next May at a venue near McKinney, hosting more than 150 people. Taylor spent June dress shopping with her mom.
While they finalize menus and decorations, they’ve gathered letters from Taylor’s employers and the couple’s family and friends evidencing the hardship Taylor would suffer if Silva were to be deported to Mexico or how her ambitions would be upended if she were to leave the U.S. with him.
Carol Ventura, a close friend of the couple throughout the last four years, wrote about the profound connection Taylor and Silva share, especially as they’ve mourned the death of Taylor’s father in 2017 and the uncertainty clouding their future.
“This caused them to build a strong foundation of trust, companionship and mutual support,” Ventura wrote in a notarized letter. “Their bond has been a source of strength for Natalie.”
The relationship has helped propel Taylor, friend Suley Mercado wrote, as Taylor has been promoted to the head of her school department.
“Since the start of their relationship, they have built a beautiful life based on the love from one another,” Mercado wrote. “A life I hope they can continue together here with all of their family and friends who love and support everything they do.”
Silva wants to start his career as an accountant. Taylor wants to go back to school for graduate work in genetics, biochemistry or microbiology, but it’s not a viable option as she’s the sole provider, she said.
In the fall, Silva is headed to Washington, D.C., for a congressional internship where he plans to share his story. She’s planning to visit him in October.
Myriad mundane issues would be fixed in what would feel like one night under a program like parole-in-place, Taylor said, compared to the endless waiting the couple has become nearly accustomed to. The constant fear of deportation, the inaccessibility of driving, insurance, health care, she listed. The tally has only grown since they were 17.
The two want to have children but want to wait until Silva has some kind of lawful presence, when there’s less risk. “If I’m having to wait years and years and years to even start thinking about a family, I get kind of sad,” Taylor said.
The past five years together have taught the couple to depend on each other. As a result, Taylor has adopted a philosophy of looking at the bigger picture. She loves him. True love doesn’t mind compromise, Taylor said.
“I have never felt frustrated or resentful of anything that this situation has put us in, it’s just part of my life,” Taylor said. “This has been my life. I wouldn’t change it.”