The American Immigration Council, a subsidiary of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) is an excellent nonprofit advocacy organization. They are much like the ACLU, but with a niche pro-immigration law and policy focus.

The following blog article, from several months ago is well worth a read regarding the Dignity Act. www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/legi… I heard about it from an immigration lawyer I follow on YouTube, Brad Bernstein, who made jokes about it has a practically zero percent chance of passing. www.youtube.com/shorts/bs…

If you are familiar with the Dignity Act, then wow! Kudos to you for learning about the most esoteric, inconspicuous Congressional activity that’s been given functionally no media attention. In many ways, it makes sense, given it’s virtually impossibility of passing in this hyper-partisan gridlock. Indeed, the insanity surrounding ICE got front page headlines, and deservedly so. Even so, I was a bit surprised to have not heard about it. I thought I follow U.S. immigration news pretty closely, and even I wasn’t familiar.

There are elements of the Dignity Act that both progressives and conservatives will absolutely hate. I don’t love it myself, especially as our border with Mexico is as secure as ever. Mexico is not run by ISIS or Kim Jong Un. But much like Oregon’s property tax system, there is no perfect fix to the last 30 years of U.S. immigration history, but that doesn’t mean all ideas are are equal. E-verify is so piecemealed anyways, replete with perverse incentives, that this does a quasi-reset anyways.

To help appease Republicans, the proposed Dignity Act mandates nationwide E-verify, increased border security, and that it only applies to non-criminal undocumented folks, who don’t get an independent path to citizenship or federal benefits despite paying into them, and pay a $7,000 fine over time. It also wouldn’t use any taxpayer funds, and would be immigrant funded, a net tax benefit. I could see how that could be a selling point to Republicans, those who ostensibly claim to not hate immigrants who want to “pay their debt to society” for “not getting to the back of the line and doing immigration the ‘right’ way.”

However, to help satisfy Democrats, it creates a new lawful immigration status called “dignity status” which provides both international travel and work authorization, and protection from deportation if program conditions are met. If those with dignity status are married to a U.S. citizen, or have U.S. citizen children over 21, they could much more easily adjust status outside of the dignity program, and get potentially get inadmissibility bars like unlawful entry waived. It also gets those who entered the U.S. without inspection as children (whether or not DACA status is active) automatically upgraded to a conditional green card, followed by a lawful permanent resident green card, and eventual citizenship if conditions are met.

Side note: speaking of citizenship we MUST affirm birthright citizenship. I hope the Supreme Court does so, and I think they will. Not only does the 14th Amendment speak for itself, but so many people fail to understand that NOT every child automatically gets their parents' home country’s citizenship, and even when they do, it can cost money and time. Plus it will fuck over regular U.S. born children to U.S. born citizens, who don’t automatically get citizneship at birth, but have to go through far more bureaucracy to prove their parents are citizens. It would create a ton of hassle for entirely native born American families.

The prospect of statelessness, where someone is born without citizenship to any place, I see as a very dangerous human rights problem, even if it’s only temporary. It could easily open the door to babies of Mexican immigrants being deported to impoverished, unstable third countries like South Sudan. Everyone deserves to have at least one reasonably stable, peaceful country in the world claim them as their own people from day 1. While I reject American exceptionalism, and believe America is only one of many great countries to be a citizen of in the world, you should get to be a born a citizen where you first arrive into this world, period, full stop. Regardless of the parents, I just think that’s only right and just for humanity.

While not without some serious downsides, compared to the status quo, the Dignity Act sounds like a net improvement from my read of it. For progressives who oppose this legislation, under the excuse of creating second class residents, I would ask, “how is the status quo any better?” Because it isn’t.

Photo below: Oh no! There’s a gap in the border fence! Look at all of those violent criminals and kilos of fentanyl coming through there, by the millions!