Whenever Washington politicians tell you that a new, 250-page bipartisan immigration bill isn’t amnesty, it’s probably amnesty. And sure enough, the “Dignity for Immigrants while Guarding our Nation to Ignite and Deliver the American Dream” (DIGNIDAD) Act of 2025… is amnesty.
Like Hollywood executives incapable of telling original stories anymore, Washington’s corporate establishment is trying to reboot a failed franchise — Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR) — that audiences never embraced in the first place. DIGNIDAD is the legislative equivalent of “Howard the Duck II.”
Like all CIR proposals, DIGNIDAD ostensibly improves immigration enforcement policy in exchange for amnestying millions of illegal immigrants. It would legalize — and create a pathway to citizenship for — aliens who came here illegally as children. Second, it would create an all-new amnesty program for illegals who came here prior to Joe Biden’s open-borders fiasco in 2021. Third, it gives amnesty to a spouse or child of a U.S. citizen, even if they had a visa denied or received a deportation order.
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The 19 Republicans who have co-sponsored the bill insist that their new “Dignity” amnesty would be temporary — apparently unaware that this makes the legislation worse. If 10 million illegal immigrants are granted seven years of amnesty, then in seven years’ time, the American people will be emotionally blackmailed into making the amnesty permanent.
In the meantime, temporary amnesty will give the bill’s real authors — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — what they want most: a huge population of cheap, legally vulnerable foreign workers they can underpay and exploit.
DIGNIDAD’s combination of faux-libertarian lawlessness, elitist exploitation and corporate welfare is what the Washington Establishment calls a “win-win.” The American people might use a more colorful term.
All the old arguments against CIR apply to DIGNIDAD, too.
First, while the amnesty half of the bill is real, the enforcement half is fake. Establishment presidents of both parties have shown they have no compunction about ignoring immigration laws to facilitate illegal in-migration. Trading phony enforcement for real amnesty is not a compromise — it’s a scam.
Second, even if the new enforcement measures were implemented, they would be inadequate to the challenges we face. Indeed, they would impede enforcement. For instance, DIGNIDAD would bar federal agencies from sharing information about red-flagged illegals who failed to qualify for amnesty, effectively using federal resources to aid and abet federal criminals.
Finally, amnesty would only invite more illegal immigration. It would signal the rest of the world that if you can get in, even by breaking our laws, you’ll be able to stay. That is what happened after the infamous 1986 CIR deal. It is what the Gang of Eight was up to in 2013. And rest assured, it is absolutely the intent of the corporate lobbyists who actually drafted this legislation.
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The real problem with DIGNIDAD — and CIR in general — is that it’s an elitist solution in search of a problem. The bill’s supporters — on Capitol Hill, K Street and Wall Street — believe that the only problem with American immigration law is that America has immigration law.
They look at the 20 million foreigners residing here illegally and take for granted that it’s on us to figure how they can stay. As if the fundamental problem with these 20 million people is their legal status. No. The problem is their presence. The problem is they broke our laws coming here and continue to break them by staying.
We already have a simple solution to that problem, as President Donald Trump and border czar Tom Homan have shown for the last 15 months. Secure the border so no new illegal immigrants enter the country, and send home those already here.
Illegal immigrants don’t need a path to citizenship. They already have citizenship — in their own countries.
That this approach is inconvenient to corporate elites and the bipartisan politicians whose campaigns they finance is not the American people’s problem. Our problem is the 20 million foreigners that the Washington establishment invited into our country to suppress workers’ wages, drive up housing prices, and drain government budgets. Amnesty undermines the rule of law, social solidarity and cultural assimilation, and treats working Americans like second-class citizens.
The lawless, globalist, elitist DIGNIDAD Act is everything congressional Republicans were elected to stop.
