The Dignity Act pretends to be a tougher, updated version of comprehensive reform. It advertises itself as imposing penalties on illegal immigrants, on not being “amnesty” — no green cards and no immediate status. Its proponents advertise its $10 billion in border enforcement, including virtual fence technology. In exchange, there are added protections for the roughly 2.5 million DACA recipients and so-called “Dreamers.”
But by any honest accounting, the bill is just a studded jacket put over the same amnesty-now, enforcement-later promises that Republicans have been rejecting for 21 years.
Make no mistake, the Dignity Act grants legal residence to millions of illegal immigrants who broke the law. Legalizing an illegal immigrant’s presence, employment, and residence in perpetuity is amnesty. Although, arguably, the Dignity Act is worse. In its pretense of looking tough, it grants “legal status” without full citizenship. That doesn’t solve the problem of illegal immigration; it creates a new problem by making official a two-tiered category of people in the republic.
The bill would solve the overwhelming of our asylum system by instituting a 60-day determination timeline through “humanitarian campuses.” This is another way of formalizing the abuse during the Biden administration of substituting a non-adversarial process in the place of a lawful judicial hearing. In other words, it’s a forum for waving people in.
The U.S. Hispanic Business Council frames this legislation as pragmatism: “The Dignity Act reflects what we’ve been asking for all along, which is a real solution, grounded in principle, backed by policy, and driven by facts.” This is to conflate business preference with our national interest. Yes, legalizing 10 million illegal workers certainly makes the future more predictable for employers who want cheap, reliable labor. But it’s not the job of the U.S. government to shape labor markets this way, when it erodes respect for the law and social cohesion.
Republicans were right to reject similar comprehensive reform proposals in 2006, 2007, 2013, and 2020. This resolve showed a rare thing in politics, learning from the mistake of the 1986 amnesty, which promised enforcement and legalized 3 million illegal immigrants. The result was decades of lax border enforcement, negligence about labor laws, and a simmering discontent that exploded in the election of 2016.
Instead of rebranding amnesty, the government must first earn popular trust by enforcing the law or, better yet, also tightening it and improving it to serve national interests. Republicans must demonstrate their refusal to entertain variations on comprehensive reform; otherwise they’ll continue to lose ground, not to Democrats, but to the basic logic that every legalization creates demand for the next one.