NumbersUSA regularly gives grades to members of Congress and candidates on their positions on border enforcement.
Co-President Jeremy Beck says 26 current Republican House members scored an F or F-minus in the Stop Amnesty Category. That means 26 members of the majority are working to keep illegal aliens in the country.
Another 36 House Republicans have a D or D-minus amnesty grade.
Just before the Independence Day holiday, 45 House Republicans cosponsored Rep. Glenn "GT" Thompson's (R-Pennsylvania) bill to give amnesty to more than 600,000 illegal workers and grow the H-2A temporary visa program by a million people over the next decade.
Because birthright citizenship remains in place, NumbersUSA says the long-term fiscal impact would extend beyond the workers themselves, including future educational and public service costs borne by taxpayers.
On average, Beck says these current grades are the worst ever.
"The average grade of this Congress is somewhere in the D range," Beck summarizes. "To put that into perspective, for most of the years we've been doing these grade cards since 1994 … the average grade of Congress was in the C range."
He says this reveals a couple of things.
"One, the Democratic Party has gotten a lot worse on this issue from our vantage point," he notes. "They basically are encouraging future surges of illegal immigration while trying to lock in place the past surges of illegal immigration. At the same time, [in] the Republican Party, you have a lot of real champions, but you've got members of the Republican Party in the House and Senate who fail the amnesty test. "
During the Biden administration, authorities recorded a historic high of over 8.6 million migrant encounters, with millions paroled into the U.S. or placed into lengthy legal backlogs.
The Trump administration has been working to correct that by dramatically strengthening the border through mass deportations, the end of "catch and release," and major investments in enforcement, but House Republicans are holding things up.
Rep. María Elvira Salazar (Florida), for example, authored the so-called Dignity Act, which allows millions of undocumented immigrants who have been in the U.S. for over five years to legally stay and work without a path to citizenship, provided they pay fines and contribute to a restitution fund.
Rep. Mike Carey (Ohio) voted to extend Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian migrants, a move that shielded a group of immigrants from deportation as the Trump administration sought to end these protections.
Rep. Rich McCormick (Georgia) has supported some bipartisan collaboration to reform visa processes and handle backlogs.
Rep. Monica De La Cruz (Texas) supports legal work status or a special visa program for foreign construction workers to fill labor shortages in her South Texas district.
NumbersUSA recently celebrated when House leadership pulled back a bill that would have effectively reauthorized loopholes that facilitate child trafficking, fake family claims, and abuse of visa programs, and Beck's organization has called on Congress to take up and pass H.R. 2, as they did in 2023.
