The Biden administration will make it easier for some immigrant spouses to continue working legally with a visa but without renewing their employment authorization as part of a settlement reached Wednesday resolving a class-action suit.

The change will benefit tens of thousands of immigrants, primarily Indian women, who are the spouses of H-1B and L-1 visa holders who were caught in a monthslong backlog to receive their work permits.

Spouses are typically allowed to apply to renew their visas and work authorization six months before expiration, but in recent years it has been taking U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services significantly longer than that to finish processing their work permits.

Tens of thousands of immigrants, many of them in high-paying tech jobs or similar fields, lost their ability to work for months, and in some cases lost their jobs when companies weren't willing to hold the positions open.

The backlogs came about in part because of the coronavirus pandemic, when immigration offices closed for three months, canceling nearly all visa appointments. But a Trump-era policy change requiring immigrant spouses to submit a fresh set of fingerprints with their renewal applications added an additional step to the process, growing the backlog further.

In May, the government waived that biometric requirement, but removing the extra step didn't solve the processing delays.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the affected immigrants in August, and on Wednesday the government signed a settlement agreeing to permanent policy changes.

Under the settlement, the government won't require spouses of L-1 visa holders to apply for work permits at all. Their L-2 visas will automatically authorize them to work. That will remove thousands of work-permit applications from the clogged system each year and save immigrants money—each work permit application costs $495.

Some spouses of H-1B visa holders will also benefit. The government will automatically extend their work authorization for up to six months if their visas haven't expired. But it won't immediately help the most applicants, whose visas and work permits expire at the same time.

“This is a huge victory for spouses, it saves people money and time,” said Jesse Bless, director of litigation at the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “It helps employers who have lost employees—it keeps the employees working.”

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Backlog issues at the immigration agency go far beyond the work-permit delays in question, and the agency has been plagued with funding issues.

The agency is funded almost entirely through the fees it collects on immigration applications, and under the Trump administration, revenue fell. The pandemic exacerbated delays, with a range of visa and immigration applications taking far longer than usual to complete.

Democrats have included $2.8 billion to bolster the agency in their roughly $2 trillion climate and social-spending package, though it isn't known whether the Senate will keep the funding along with other immigration provisions.