A Florida Republican is now pushing a bill to let illegal aliens stay.
She says Republicans need to pass it – to prove they are not racist.
And a top Republican went on Fox News this week and told her own party to hand amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.
Maria Salazar Says the Dignity Act Is Not Amnesty and Not a Path to Citizenship
Rep. Maria Salazar went on Fox News this week and told her own party to hand amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.
Her exact words: "It's impossible if we, the Republicans, put together a bill like this one on the floor, for any Democrat with Hispanics, supposedly you know 'Hispanics belong to the Democrats.' No, not anymore, because right now we're going to be demonstrating to the Dems that we are not such a bunch of racists, that we are giving them dignity, not citizenship."
https://twitter.com/RepMariaSalazar/status/2043729245759815737?s=20
Not: this bill will stop the next Abrego Garcia.
Not: this bill secures the border.
The entire pitch is that Republicans should legalize millions of illegal aliens so Democrats will stop calling them racist.
Brian Kilmeade let her say it without a single pushback.
Why the Dignity Act Is Mass Amnesty and Does Include a Path to Citizenship
Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina put it plainly this week: "Let's say it how it is, the DIGNIDAD Act is a Trojan horse for amnesty."
Norman is right.
The bill grants green card status to illegal aliens classified as DREAMers who arrived before age 18 and have been here since January 2021.
Green card holders can apply for naturalized citizenship after just five years.
That is a path to citizenship.
The bill also creates a "Dignity Program" that places most of the estimated 11 to 22 million illegal aliens in the country on a track toward permanent legal status.
George Fishman, a senior legal fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and former Deputy General Counsel at DHS under Trump's first term, calculated that the DIGNIDAD Act would grant first-tier amnesty to as many as three million illegal aliens and second-tier amnesty to as many as 12 million – while increasing overall legal immigration levels by 55 percent over the next decade.
And then there is what Fox News contributor Will Chamberlain called the corporate giveaway buried inside.
https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/2041611391086285153?s=20
The DIGNIDAD Act would lock into law the Optional Practical Training program – a federal scheme that exempts businesses from paying Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes when they hire foreign graduates over American ones.
Heritage Foundation analysts have documented how OPT hands corporations a 7.65 percent labor cost discount for every foreign worker they choose over a recent American college graduate.
This is not an immigration reform bill.
It is a Chamber of Commerce bill dressed in Spanish.
How the DIGNIDAD Act Repeats the Gang of Eight Betrayal Republicans Already Lived Through
The year was 2013.
Marco Rubio joined Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, and Bob Menendez to push the Gang of Eight bill – the same sweeping amnesty package sold with the same argument Salazar is making now.
Republicans must embrace amnesty to win Hispanic voters, or they will lose every future election.
The bill passed the Senate 68–32.
House conservatives revolted and killed it.
Rubio spent years trying to walk it back, eventually arguing the bill was never intended to become law – a notable departure from what he said while pushing it.
Then Donald Trump ran the hardest anti-amnesty campaign in modern history and won all seven swing states – with Salazar herself crediting Hispanic voters for putting him over the top in four of them.
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2042385634057158668?s=20
She is now using that result as the argument for why Republicans should pass amnesty.
The 20 Republican Co-Sponsors of the DIGNIDAD Act and What Voters Can Do Before 2026
Twenty House Republicans have co-sponsored the DIGNIDAD Act, including Reps. Mike Lawler of New York, Monica De La Cruz of Texas, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Don Bacon of Nebraska, and Young Kim of California.
CIS fellow Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge who drafted federal immigration legislation, called the bill "rage bait" – designed to go nowhere while signaling "a failure to read the room of voters who brought Donald Trump back to the White House in November 2024."
Republican voters sent that majority to finish the wall, deport criminal aliens, and end the magnet that pulls millions more across every year.
A bill that legalizes up to 12 million illegal aliens, adds five million more over the next decade, and permanently codifies a corporate tax break that punishes companies for hiring American graduates is not a Republican bill.
Primary voters should remind the 20 co-sponsors of that before November.
Sources:
- John Binder, "Maria Salazar Suggests Republicans Pass 'DIGNIDAD' Amnesty for Illegal Aliens to Prove They Are Not Racist," Breitbart News, April 13, 2026.
- John Binder, "Rep. Ralph Norman: 'DIGNIDAD Act' Is 'Trojan Horse for Mass Amnesty,'" Breitbart News, April 13, 2026.
- Will Chamberlain, "Rep. Maria Salazar's DIGNIDAD Act Is Amnesty in Disguise," Fox News, April 10, 2026.
- S.A. McCarthy, "Republicans Indicate Bipartisan Amnesty Bill Dead on Arrival," The Daily Signal, April 12, 2026.
- M.D. Kittle, "The 8 Most Insane Things in the 'DIGNIDAD' Amnesty Bill," The Federalist, April 8, 2026.
- "The College Lie: How Washington's Visa Loopholes Hand Good Jobs to Foreign Workers," Heritage Foundation.
- Jon Feere, "Optional Practical Training for Foreign Students Now a $4 Billion Annual Tax Exemption," Center for Immigration Studies, September 15, 2024.