A bill enabling survivors of U.S. citizens to get green cards even if the death occurred within two years of marriage is awaiting President Obama's signature.

The bill halts the "widow penalty," which required that spouses be married for two years before a surviving spouse may apply for residency, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

The measure, a portion of the more than $40 billion Homeland Security appropriations bill, provides that surviving spouses may apply for a green card for themselves and on behalf of their children regardless of when the citizen spouse died or how long they were married.

"It was just something crying out to be fixed. These cases should have been approved," immigration lawyer Brent Renison of Lake Oswego, Ore., said, referring to the several hundred immigrant spouses nationwide negatively affected by the old law.

Renison had fought the issue in immigration cases across the nation since 2004. His turf included Los Angeles, where a judge this year ordered the Department of Homeland Security to reopen the cases of nearly two dozen people who had been found ineligible to apply for green cards because of the deaths of their spouses.