A Republican lawmaker has proposed legislation that would block the deportation of an untold number of illegal immigrants and offer them a legal pathway to stay in the United States.
The longshot bill would also offer legal status and a pathway to permanent residency — and eventually to citizenship — for recipients of the Obama-era DACA program.
“We are the noblest nation on the face of the Earth. It is time for our immigration system to measure up,” Salazar wrote in Spanish on X.
Salazar repeatedly claimed that the legislation is not an amnesty bill, arguing that it “allows certain long-term undocumented immigrants to earn legal status, without amnesty or a path to citizenship.”
The legislation has faced fierce criticism over being an “amnesty Bill” and been derided by critics as an amnesty measure, however. Former Representative Matt Gaetz warned that “the ‘Dignity Act’ includes amnesty for illegal immigrants,” while conservative lawyer Will Chamberlain charged that the legislation “is an amnesty bill for illegal aliens and would absolutely blow the door open on legal migration.”
Conservative organizations similarly warned that the legislation includes amnesty for illegal aliens. “There is no mistake about it, this is first and foremost an amnesty bill,” the Federation for American Immigration Reform wrote when the legislation was introduced in a previous legislative session in 2022.
Salazar touted the legislation in media appearances this week, claiming that some illegal aliens “deserve to stay in the United States.”
“There is another mass of people, most of them Hispanics, who have been here for more than five years contributing to the economy, who do not have a criminal record, and those people deserve some type of dignity and deserve to stay,” Salazar said in an appearance on Fox News.
Daily Wire host Matt Walsh shot back at Salazar on X, blasting her argument that some illegal aliens “deserve” to remain in America despite illegally entering the country.
“Deserve? If foreigners ‘deserve’ to disregard our laws, what laws do I as an American citizen deserve to disregard? Do I deserve to not pay my taxes? Ignore speed limits? Shoplift? Or is this an entitlement reserved only for foreign nationals? Please explain, Maria,” Walsh charged.
Salazar is not the only Republican in support of the effort to offer legal status to illegal aliens.
The act has also received the support from:
- Mario Rafael Diaz-Balart (R-FL)
- Mike Lawler (R-NY)
- Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA)
- Dan Newhouse (R-WA)
- David Valadao (R-CA)
- Mike Kelly (R-PA)
- Gabe Evans (R-CO)
- Marlin Stutzman (R-IN)
- Don Bacon (R-NE)
- Young Kim (R-CA)
A ticking time-bomb set by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to Hurt ElectionsThey Must Be Stopped! |
For Illegals working in the economy Yes
All others if felons then NO