WASHINGTON — California’s undocumented population stands to benefit significantly from the White House’s immigration policy announced Tuesday to extend sweeping protections to undocumented residents who have lived in the country for years and are married to U.S. citizens.

Roughly 12%, or 315,000, of California’s undocumented residents are married to U.S. citizens, according to Migration Policy Institute. It is still unclear how many of those people are eligible for the new policy, but the state is home to the largest number of undocumented individuals in the nation.

“California wins big with this executive order,” said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Los Angeles-based organization Coalition For Humane Immigrant Rights.

To be eligible for the White House’s new program, undocumented spouses must have been in the country for at least 10 years, be married to a citizen as of June 17, 2024, and not have a criminal record. The rule also applies to their children under the age of 21 who are stepchildren of U.S. citizens.

The new rule could protect more than half a million spouses and children in the U.S. from deportation, according to White House estimates, and eventually let them apply for citizenship. White House officials told The Bee that they did not have state-by-state estimates.

Senior administration officials told reporters that eligible people have lived in the U.S. for 23 years on average.

President Joe Biden discussed the executive action on Tuesday at an event marking the 12th anniversary of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) — the Obama-era program that protects individuals who came to the U.S. as children, known as DREAMers, from deportation.

The White House also announced plans to help DACA recipients and other DREAMers who graduated from U.S. schools of higher education and have job offers in fields that match their degrees to more quickly get work visas.

“There will be tears of joy paired with sighs of relief as the significance of these executive actions by President Biden sets in for these families,” Rep. Nanette Barragán, D-Los Angeles, head of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said in a statement.

Barragán called Biden’s action “the most significant protections for immigrant families” since DACA was announced by President Barack Obama in 2012.

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