A bipartisan group of lawmakers on Tuesday proposed a new framework for a decades-old dilemma both parties in Washington have repeatedly failed to solve: immigration.
The new legislation’s driving principle? Dignity, the lawmakers say.
“Why the word dignity? Because it resonates. It is our intention to bring dignity to many sectors in this country who are under duress,” said Rep. María Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., who co-authored the bill. She listed first the goal of bringing dignity to U.S. Border Patrol, saying they were overworked and underpaid. Then, the business community, who she said struggled to fill vacant jobs.
“And finally, bring dignity to those millions and millions of people who are invisible to most Americans who are doing the jobs others are willing to do: the undocumented class. They deserve the respect we give our neighbors even if we don't know them,” she continued at a press conference outside the Capitol on Tuesday morning.
If passed by Congress and signed into law, the legislation would create a pathway to citizenship for millions of immigrants already in the country and those who have yet to arrive.
The bill, dubbed “The Dignity Act of 2023,” was first introduced by Salazar in 2022. The two-term House Republican, once endorsed by President Donald Trump, joined forces with an avowed progressive, Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, to author a new, nearly 500-page version of the measure.
It would be the first bipartisan proposal in Congress since 2013 that would create a pathway to citizenship, according to a timeline maintained by the Council on Foreign Relations.
The Dignity Act focuses on four areas of policy: border security, legal status for undocumented immigrants, pathways to citizenship and reform to the United States’ asylum laws.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., a close ally of President Joe Biden who has been working in the Senate to advance the president’s immigration reform agenda, endorsed the bill in a statement on Tuesday.
While members of Congress from both parties were at the bill’s announcement Tuesday, it faces an uphill battle in a Congress where Republicans are demanding tougher border security, the resumption of construction of a barrier across the U.S.-Mexico border and restrictions on asylum laws and legal immigration.
Earlier this month, the House GOP passed a bill that would do just that, but Biden pledged to veto it and Senate Democrats have come out strongly against the measure. Salazar voted in favor of the bill.
Salazar, a former journalist for Univision and Telemundo, represents part of Miami and is the daughter of Cuban exiles. Escobar, one of the first Latinas from Texas elected to Congress, represents El Paso — a border city that has been an epicenter for migrant arrivals.
“There has not been a bipartisan, comprehensive immigration bill put forward in any serious way, especially in the House, for a decade,” Escobar said. “We haven't seen movement on immigration reform in over 30 years. Meanwhile, the situation that many of us have been witnessing over a number of years has grown more dire.”
“Waiting for either side’s idea of what is perfect is exactly what's gotten us into the situation we face today. Neither side can afford to continue to wait. Otherwise communities again like ours continue to pay the price,” added Escobar.
The lawmakers hope to create a “Dignity Program” to bestow what they call “Dignity” legal status for undocumented immigrants that would be permanently renewable with some conditions. Escobar’s office estimated as many as 11 million people could earn legal status under the Dignity Program.
“If you have been here for five years, and you do not have a criminal record, you will be able to go on the ‘Dignity’ status for seven years. You will not be deported. You will not lose your assets. You can work anywhere in the country,” Salazar said. Dignity Program recipients would be able to travel to their home countries to visit family and return without issue, she added. They would not have access to government assistance or health insurance.
Instead of paying a 7% federal payroll tax that funds federal benefits the immigrants won’t have access to, those in the program on a payroll would instead be levied a 1.5% tax to pay their way to citizenship.
To qualify, immigrants would need to pay $5,000 over the seven years the program grants legal status, pass a criminal background check, pay outstanding taxes and continue paying taxes through their time in the country. Those fees will result in tens of billions of dollars, Salazar said, for border security and retraining programs for U.S. citizens to supplement any job losses from immigrants granted legal status.
The bill would fund itself and not require raising taxes, according to Salazar’s office.
“No one can say that the undocumented are stealing anything away from you,” Salazar said. “After seven years in dignity, if you want to become an American, then you can go into the other path which is the redemption path.”
That path would give Dignity Program recipients the opportunity to apply for citizenship after another $5,000 over five years, learning English, and either participation in community service or an additional $5,000.
“For those skeptics, many of them in my Republican Party that say that we are legitimizing millions without the border being secured, as it has happened for 30 years, listen to this: There is a provision within the Dignity Act that guarantees that no one will become an American until the Government Accountability Office, the GAO, certifies that the border is secured,” Salazar added. “If any other member in both parties wants to work with us, or has a better idea, welcome. We’re more than willing to work with them.”
The nonpartisan GAO would have to certify that the border was secure for 12 consecutive months before citizenship pathways would be open. The definition of a secure border, according to the bill, would be a 90% apprehension rate of migrants attempting to illegally cross the United States’ southern border.
The legislation would also codify the Dream and Promise Act, creating permanent legal status and a pathway to citizenship for “dreamers,” or immigrants who arrived as children illegally that were given temporary legal status by way of a 2012 executive order by President Barack Obama.
Another provision would allow Dignity Program recipients a pathway to citizenship if they enlist in the U.S. military. And undocumented agricultural workers would also have the opportunity to apply for permanent legal residency.
Beyond border security measures and tweaks to the country’s visa system, major immigration legislation has fallen flat over and over again in Congress. In 1986, Congress passed and President Ronald Reagan signed a law that gave legal status to millions of immigrant workers living in the country illegally.
Since then, efforts to reform the United States’ broken immigration system have failed repeatedly, leaving immigrants in limbo for decades — far too long, the lawmakers argued on Tuesday. Or as Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., said at Tuesday’s press conference: “I was born in 1986.”
“It’s unconscionable,” he added.
In the last four decades, the only other significant piece of federal policy addressing immigrants’ legal status has been Obama’s 2012 executive order allowing hundreds of thousands of dreamers to stay in the U.S.
Dubbed “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals,” the rule has faced dozens of legal challenges, an attempted gutting by President Donald Trump, and is currently being adjudicated in front of a Texas federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush.
The border security measures in the bill center on adding more personnel to the border patrol, funding for new equipment, $10 billion in enhancements for ports of entry, and funding local governments and non-governmental organizations on the border to help them manage the flow of migrants.
There will be zero funding for the border wall, as explicitly noted in a summary of the bill released by Escobar’s office, but “enhanced barriers” will be utilized by the border patrol under the bill’s framework.
Additionally, the bill would create five “regional processing centers” in key Latin American countries that would provide services to asylum seekers and other migrants. If the officials there determine a prospective migrant is eligible for asylum, they will be given humanitarian visas to travel to the U.S., where their claim would be evaluated.
In recent weeks, the Biden administration has initiated the opening of roughly 100 processing centers in certain countries that help migrants apply to go to the U.S., Spain or Canada.
Near the border in the U.S., the bill would authorize the creation of “humanitarian campuses” that would give migrants 60 days to meet with legal counsel, be interviewed by officials to discuss their asylum claim, and have their case determined by asylum officers.
“Asylum seekers deserve better. Dreamers deserve better. Our country deserves better,” said Rep. Kathy Manning, D-N.C. “We hear the common refrain that we're used to hearing on both sides that we need immigration reform. But that is where the agreement ends. We're here today to prove that we can reach agreement.”