If you are a permanent resident, then your spouse is stuck back in the country. First thing you can atleast do is file Petition for Alien Relative Form I-130. I know that it is going to take a while for your spouse to be in this country legally.. some people bring their spouses as a student also. Unless the visa number is current, your spouse cannot get to start processing for his green card application and that means, no work authorization and no social security number. There is only one PLUS point for filing the Petition for Alien Relative at this point of time. Like last time, they had specially let people related to LPR have a special Vi Visa in which they could come to the United States and work and renew it until the visa number would get current.. Who knows, there would be this announcement again.. Normally they would allow it to people whose case is already filed with the Service Centers and either pending for decision or already approved and waiting for visa numbers. So I guess that would be best you can do at this point of time. ~Sundari