Americans Want Mass Deportations, Not Amnesty
Erin Schniederjan /
Another amnesty push is happening on Capitol Hill, yet the sponsors of the DIGNIDAD (Dignity) Act of 2025 are attempting to market it as not an amnesty bill.
“America last” Republicans like Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., the original co-sponsor of the bill and daughter of Cuban immigrants, refuse to recognize what the American people mandated the Trump administration to do—carry out mass deportations.
For starters, the acronym of the bill name is in Spanish, which is not the official language of the U.S. Naming an amnesty bill in a foreign language is a slap in the face to Americans, and a member of Congress legislating on behalf of the illegal immigrant population is disloyal to America.
The DIGNIDAD Act has been drafted to give legal status to at least 13 million illegal immigrants who have been in the U.S. for many years because removing them or encouraging them to self-deport is supposedly unkind and a threat to their dignity as human persons. However, the dignity of the American citizen was never accounted for as this bill was drafted (or, frankly, any time amnesty is considered).
Failing to mass deport is already tacit amnesty, but codifying amnesty in legislation is a direct contradiction of immigration law and only encourages the next wave of illegal immigration.
There are multiple types of amnesty in the DIGNIDAD Act. First, “DREAMer” amnesty would be granted to the estimated 2.5 million illegal aliens who entered the U.S. as minors. Under this amnesty, the person would be given 10 years of conditional status, then full permanent residence would be available to them, the precursor to U.S. citizenship.
Second, the act establishes the Dignity Program, which would give around 11 million illegal aliens who have been in the U.S. since before Dec. 31, 2020—prior to former President Joe Biden’s border crisis—amnesty. Illegal aliens benefiting from this receive renewable legal status, work authorization, and the ability to travel in and out of the U.S. as they please. The only condition is that they check in every two years.
Third, amnesty is given to illegal alien spouses and children of U.S. citizens.
In addition to amnesty, the bill inhibits use of information provided in DIGNIDAD benefit applications from being used for immigration enforcement. This would repeat a terrible policy from the 1986 amnesty law that only fostered fraud.
The bill would prevent immigration enforcement actions from occurring in or near an overbroad list of “protected areas,” including places where children gather, where ceremonies like weddings occur, medical health facilities, and courthouses, among others.
The DIGNIDAD Act wouldn’t just gut immigration enforcement; it would also increase and expand legal immigration benefits. The bill would double employment-based visas and codify the foreign student-to-employee pipeline by allowing all “temporary” foreign students to remain permanently in the U.S. It would codify the Optional Practical Training program, which incentivizes employers to hire foreign graduates instead of American graduates, and allow STEM Ph.D. and medical students to self-petition for both temporary and permanent visas.
America’s immigration system is for Americans, but the DIGNIDAD Act is for the rest of the world.
The current push for this bill is to put conservatives on defense, opposing amnesty, instead of being on offense, advocating for mass deportations and other, better legislation that would actually enforce our immigration laws and prevent noncitizens from voting in our federal elections.
The DIGNIDAD Act defies the will of the American people. That is undignified.