Florida Rep. Maria Salazar and a bipartisan group of other lawmakers believe a special accommodation should be made for illegal aliens who have been in the country for at least five years and do not otherwise have a criminal record.
This week, she introduced the Dignity Act of 2025.
She told Fox News those individuals deserve some kind of dignity.
"Bring them out of the shadows," she urged. "Make them pay a fine for seven years. That is billions of dollars to the Treasury. Make them give us 1% of their salary over seven years, no federal programs, no health insurance, and then they can go back home for Christmas; they can come back, continue working."
Ira Mehlman says the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has always opposed amnesty legislation, so it opposes this proposal.

"In spite of the fact that Congressman Salazar insists that it's not an amnesty, it actually is," he asserts. "It is entitling people who came here illegally and managed to stick it out for five years to remain here, albeit in some kind of lesser status. We shouldn't have people here in those sorts of permanent situations."
Meanwhile, there is hard data to support anecdotal evidence that American workers are the winners in the Trump administration's stepped-up immigration enforcement in the workplace.
For example, two days after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) carried out a worksite enforcement action at the Glenn Valley Foods meatpacking plant in Omaha, Nebraska, last month – resulting in the detaining and likely deportations of 76 illegal workers – NBC News reported that "every seat in the waiting area … was occupied with people filling out job applications."
In other words, the repeated claim that Americans are unwilling to do certain jobs does not check out.