Re: Daca recipient married to a H1b holder
 

I see. I forgot 601A can only be approved if there are immediate relative is green card holder or citizen ?

Re: Daca recipient married to a H1b holder
 

Parent or spouse.

Re: Daca recipient married to a H1b holder
 

Great, thank you again for all your inputs Demise and taoni10. I will update this post once we decided what to do.

Re: Daca recipient married to a H1b holder
 

small update:
I talked to a few lawyers over the past few days below are the key takeaways.
1/ 245i in general are very objective, if you don't get denied on the filing for unprovable case decades ago, you might have a fighting case. But apparently this is a case by case scenario.
2/ for DACA lawyers have seen AP could potentially fix the unlawful presence issue, by leaving the country and return, your previous unlawful presence gets a reset, therefore I could file along side my spouse's i485.
3/ 601A over all isn't recommended because it's not easy to get approved and the queue is super long. This is a bit of a surprise to me, because I thought the hardship criteria is easy in our cases because due to separation of family, mortgages, bills etc.

Re: Daca recipient married to a H1b holder
 

Get a different lawyer to whoever told you the nonsense in 2 and 3.
AP doesn't reset prior unlawful presence. All it does is clear an EWI if you had one. The prior unlawful presence still hangs over you. It also doesn't work for 245(k) (which for employment based AOS excuses violation of status under 180 days since last admission and wipes away any incurred prior to the last admission) because parole is not admission in the understanding of 245(k).
I-601A isn't super easy but it's also not super difficult and a good lawyer should know how to dress up the case to it'd pass muster.

245(i) on a denied petition is definitely very much a case by case basis since you have to prove that the petition would be approved if whoever didn't drop the ball or circumstances didn't change after filing with something that old, yes it will be hard especially with a labor petition because that's a multi-factor analysis. Any citizen uncles or aunts or grandparents who might've filed an I-130 way back when? Those are much easier to prove even if died because either the relationship exists or it doesn't.