In the wake of President Donald Trump’s historic pledge to carry out a mass deportation program, a coalition of Republicans is promoting a bill to grant widespread amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, prompting fierce backlash from fellow congressional Republicans and the GOP base.

Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) led 19 other Republicans in the House of Representatives in introducing H.R. 4393, the “Dignity for Immigrants while Guarding our Nation to Ignite and Deliver the American Dream Act of 2025” or DIGNIDAD (Spanish for “Dignity”) Act, in July. Late last month, Salazar and her cohorts launched the “Dignity Coalition” in an effort to gain support for the legislation. The renewed interest in the updated legislation, which Salazar touts as “the only serious, bipartisan solution to fix America’s broken immigration system,” has drawn scrutiny and criticism from fellow Republicans and immigration experts, who have declared the bill to be a thinly-veiled bid at widespread amnesty.

The DIGNIDAD Act

The legislation starts by introducing border security provisions, including the construction of barriers at the southern border, but quickly moves on to establish mass amnesty for illegal immigrants. “Division B — Dignity and American Dream” of the DIGNIDAD Act instructs the Homeland Security Secretary and Attorney General to “adjust to the status of an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence … an alien who is inadmissible or deportable from the United States, is subject to a grant of Deferred Enforced Departure, has temporary protected status … or is the son or daughter of an alien admitted as a nonimmigrant” if that “alien has been continuously physically present in the United States since January 1, 2021,” and meets a handful of other requirements, including either having been accepted to an institute of higher education or holding a high school diploma.

The legislation provides immediate work authorization for illegal immigrants, establishes unlimited access to permanent legal residency (commonly called holding a green card) and allows illegal immigrants who obtain green cards to apply for U.S. citizenship, and introduces a criminal waiver. The bill allows the Homeland Security Secretary to “waive the grounds of inadmissibility … for humanitarian purposes, for family unity, or because the waiver is otherwise in the public interest.” Illegal immigrants who commit most violent crimes or are determined a national security threat are ineligible for the waiver, but crimes including domestic violence and traffic violations are eligible to be waived under the bill. These provisions would be available to an estimated two to three million illegal immigrants.

The DIGNIDAD Act also establishes what its authors call the “Dignity Program,” which allows anywhere from 10 to 12 million illegal immigrants currently in the U.S. access to renewable seven-year work authorization permits and travel authorization. The program would also provide for “deferred action” for those eligible, effectively halting deportations. “An alien who appears to be prima facie eligible for status under this subtitle during the 24-month period following the date of enactment of this Act may not be removed or fined based on their immigration status,” the bill states. The “prima facie” eligibility effectively halts deportations for all illegal immigrants who apply for the “Dignity Program,” even those who have been issued final orders of removal by immigration courts.

Other provisions in the bill reduce visa caps, create and expand “humanitarian parole” programs, and reduce asylum and visa application backlogs by rapidly approving most applications. One provision even establishes student “loan forgiveness” for law school graduates who have “completed not less than four years of full-time employment as an attorney providing legal services” for illegal immigrants. The provision orders the federal government to use taxpayer dollars to “forgive 75 percent of the eligible student loan obligation of a borrower … that is outstanding after the completion of the fourth year of employment described in such paragraph.” Yet another provision actually allows for illegal immigrants already deported to apply for and receive authorization to return and participate in the “Dignity Program.” In other words, the illegal immigrants that the first Trump administration managed to deport will be invited back and offered a chance to achieve legal permanent residency in most cases.

Understanding the Problem

George Fishman, senior legal fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) and former Deputy General Counsel at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under Trump’s first term, explained that the DIGNIDAD Act would grant “first-tier amnesty” to as many as three million illegal immigrants and “second-tier amnesty” to as many as 12 million, and “will increase legal immigration levels by 55 percent — over five million persons over the next decade. This is not what the American people were hoping for in electing Donald Trump as president.”

CIS Resident Fellow in Law and Policy Andrew R. Arthur, a former immigration judge and lawyer responsible for drafting federal immigration legislation, referred to the DIGNIDAD Act as “rage bait.” He explained, “This bill was designed to go nowhere, but its filing shows a failure to read the room of voters who brought Donald Trump back to the White House in November 2024.”

“The first clue that H.R. 4393 wasn’t written to pass lies in its name,” Arthur observed. “Respectfully, naming your bill the ‘DIGNIDAD Act’ and then providing subtitles is the ‘press one for English’ of legislative drafting,” he added, noting that foreigners who seek permanent residence in the U.S. have an obligation to respect and assimilate to American culture, including the use of American English. Relying on his own experience working with federal legislators, Arthur also pointed out that the DIGNIDAD Act has been referred to seven different House committees. “If the primary sponsor is on a committee with clear jurisdiction over an issue and has a good relationship with the chair and the other members, the smart play is to write the bill in such a way that it is referred to only that committee and no other,” he observed. “Otherwise, it will usually be sent to more than one committee, for serial consideration and mark-up, and if any of the chairs of those other committees refuses to even consider the bill, it will stall and die.” Arthur added, “Unless the legislation is a clear response to an imminent and existential threat to the Republic … more than three referrals generally always spells failure.”

“Simply put, the DIGNIDAD Act wasn’t written to pass; it’s a ‘messaging bill’ intended to make a point,” Arthur opined. “There are, admittedly, good-faith arguments for why some aliens who came illegally or overstayed their periods of nonimmigrant admission should be allowed to remain, but most amnesties have failed or, worse, simply encouraged more illegal immigration because would-be illegal migrants don’t read the fine print and smugglers have worse ethics (but better sales pitches) than telephone extended-warranty peddlers,” he continued. “Consequently, selling any amnesty is a heavy lift even for the savviest of politicos, and the DIGNIDAD Act has more poison pills than Dr. Kevorkian’s pharmacopeia.”

Arthur observed that the DIGNIDAD Act not only grants explicit amnesties for millions of illegal immigrants but also contains “amnesties in the amnesties.” He noted the provision establishing “prima facie” eligibility for illegal immigrants applying to the “Dignity Program,” commenting, “Government databases aren’t the best or most up-to-date, and this provision would create a logistical nightmare for ICE officers trying to determine whether to investigate, let alone arrest, an alien with a final removal order.” He added, “Moreover, why would ICE bother arresting any aliens, given that they will all immediately turn around and seek amnesty?”

The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) explicitly bars Article III courts from reviewing most administrative immigration court decisions. (Immigration courts are a component of the federal executive branch, governed by Article II of the Constitution, while federal district courts and their appellate divisions, all the way up to the Supreme Court, are established and governed by Article III, which created the federal judiciary system.) The DIGNIDAD Act, however, attempts to skirt this provision by allowing “for judicial review of denials starting at the federal district court level and going up from there.” Arthur stated that, in the INA, Congress intentionally “cut district court judges out of reviews of most administrative immigration decisions because those courts were where immigration cases went to die.”

Additionally, there are fewer than 700 federal district court judges “on the bench right now, and if you were to add the hundreds of thousands of amnesty reviews (at a minimum) this bill could create to their dockets, you’d grind every other federal case to a halt,” Arthur pointed out. “As a taxpayer with April 15 coming up, if the DIGNIDAD Act were to pass, I’d beg DHS to rubber-stamp every amnesty application to save the massive litigation costs and prevent judicial-branch calamity.”

“Nothing about this bill suggests it’s a serious effort. In fact, it is to lawmaking what graffiti is to art, a near-meta effort to call the very concept of legislating into question,” Arthur concluded. The only goal the DIGNIDAD Act achieves, he suggested, is reminding “the public why amnesty is a bad idea: It’s unfair to those who have followed the costly and laborious process of coming legally; it’s a give-away bordering on pandering to special interests; it’s complicated and thus easily exploited; it’s a veritable ‘lawyers’ relief act’; and it would throw enforcement into chaos.”

The legislation has drawn the ire of numerous Republicans and immigration hardliners, allowing many to articulate the dangers of amnesty and reiterate the necessity of stringent immigration enforcement and reform. “Simply put,” Arthur commented, “the DIGNIDAD Act would be Swiftian-level satire if the sponsors’ intent was to rage-bait the Right into demanding more ICE arrests and deportations, and an even-tighter border. That plainly wasn’t the sponsors’ goal, but regardless, it’s the reason why so many on the Right are right now discussing a bill that was built to fail.”

‘No Amnesty’

One of the DIGNIDAD Act’s co-sponsors, Rep. Mike Lawler (D-N.Y.), took to the airwaves this week to promote the legislation. The bill, he said, has “broad bipartisan support,” noting the Republicans and Democrats who have signed on as co-sponsors in recent months. “I think folks do recognize that we have a problem,” he said. “If you’ve been here more than five years — so not the people who came under Joe Biden’s disastrous administration, but the people who have been in this country five, 10, 15, 20 years, whose children and grandchildren may in fact be American citizens — they would qualify if they haven’t committed a crime, they paid back taxes, they pay a fine, they have a job, and they do not collect government benefits,” Lawler claimed. “They would qualify for legal status, not citizenship; they would be precluded from citizenship,” he added, referring to the approximately 12 million illegal immigrants who would be eligible to participate in the “Dignity Program,” not the roughly three million who would be classified as “dreamers” and would easily be able to attain U.S. citizenship. The DIGNIDAD Act, the congressman said, would “get people out of the shadows.”

Lawler’s fellow Republicans were less enthusiastic. “No amnesty. No amnesty-lite. No ‘path to citizenship.’ No ‘Dignity Act.’ This is a red line,” said Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas), noting that the legislation would grant amnesty to over 10 million illegal immigrants. “It’s rank amnesty and everybody knows it. I want dignity for Americans — the people whose interests we represent — not illegal aliens. That means doing what we said we’d do: mass deportations,” he added, in a separate social media post. “The ‘DIGNIDAD’ amnesty bill is two massive middle fingers to the voters who gave President Trump a popular vote victory and handed Republicans a trifecta, all on a platform of mass deportations.”

“Amnesty doesn’t fix a broken system,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), “it rewards the very lawbreaking that caused it. We should be restoring the rule of law and pausing immigration, not incentivizing more illegal behavior.” In an interview, Roy asserted, “The so-called Dignity Act isn’t about dignity — it’s about eroding accountability.” He continued, “It rewards illegal immigration with sweeping amnesty for millions of lawbreakers while pushing aside the basic duty to put Americans first. A nation that won’t enforce its own laws isn’t compassionate, it’s neglecting its responsibility to its own citizens.” Roy and other members of the House Freedom Caucus have vowed to oppose the legislation in Congress. Roy charged that the bill “belongs in the trash bin of failed ideas.”

Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) shared a video compilation depicting Americans who have been murdered by illegal immigrants, with the caption, “They deserved dignity.” He added, “Stop rewarding illegal aliens who reject our culture, values, and laws with citizenship. If dignity matters so much, give some to the American people who elites have ripped off for decades. The ‘Dignity Act’ is just amnesty. Throw it in the garbage.” Other Republicans who have signaled their opposition to the legislation include Reps. Lauren Boebert (Colo.), Eric Burlison (Mo.), Mark Harris (N.C.), Keith Self (Texas), Tom Tiffany (Wis.), and Senators Mike Lee (Utah) and Eric Schmitt (Mo.).

A number of conservative activists and organizations have also called for the DIGNIDAD Act to be halted. “Perhaps some on the Right missed the memo. The mandate was for mass deportations, NOT mass amnesty,” the Heritage Foundation posted on social media, adding, “The only pathway we need for illegal aliens is a pathway back to where they came from.”

Conservative commentator and documentary filmmaker Matt Walsh said that the DIGNIDAD Act is “even worse than you think. If this bill became law it would destroy the country. It would be the most disastrous piece of legislation in decades.” He added, “Every Republican who supports it should be run out of town.”

Recent polling published by the Immigration Accountability Project found that nearly 60% of likely voters would oppose amnesty and still support the deportation of all illegal immigrants currently in the U.S. and that Republican voters would be encouraged to vote in November’s crucial midterm elections by an increase in immigration enforcement and discouraged from voting by a failure to follow through on the mass deportation program promised by Trump in 2024. A Cygnal survey from late January also concluded that 61% of voters support the deportation of all illegal immigrants, 73% consider entering the U.S. illegally to be a criminal act, and 54% support the conduct of ICE in arresting and deporting illegal immigrants.