Earlier this year, I formed Homeland PAC, a federal Super PAC with the goal of holding politicians accountable for supporting amnesty for illegal aliens. I was almost immediately dismissed by members of Congress and Washington, D.C. insiders because they believed the PAC was redundant in the age of Trump.
Yet, we are 10 years into the Trump Revolution, and still Republicans who waved signs claiming they support mass deportation are still campaigning for amnesty. Every two years, a bloc of Republicans in Congress quietly put their names on bills that would legalize those same undocumented persons in direct contrast to President Trump’s, and the American people’s, agenda.
This is not about one rogue bill, but a pattern among congressional Republicans to talk tough on the border and then turn around to benefit a non-citizen population at the expense of their own constituents. Across the 118th and 119th Congresses, a consistent group of Republicans has backed legislation to convert illegal workers into legal ones through guest-worker conversions, renewable “dignity” status, or an outright green-card track for farm labor, and shielding companies that hire them from penalties. That is amnesty in substance, and the members carrying it are on the ballot in the midterms.
Let me be clear about the word, because its defenders will spend a great deal of energy on definitions. When I say amnesty, I do not mean only a path to citizenship. I mean the mass legalization of an illegal workforce — taking people who entered or worked in this country unlawfully and granting them legal status and the right to keep working. Whether the reward is a green card, a renewable permit, or a guest-worker visa laundered clean of prior violations, the result is the same: you can break the law to work here, and Congress will regularize you after the fact.
Three bills in the current Congress carry the pattern. The most sweeping is the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, reintroduced this session as H.R. 3227 (FWMA). It creates a new “certified agricultural worker” status for illegal farmhands and, for those who keep at it, a paid path to a green card. It has cleared the House twice in past Congresses, and this year it was brought back by a bipartisan group that included Republicans David Valadao, Mike Simpson, Maria Salazar, and Dan Newhouse.
Then there is the Dignity Act, H.R. 4393, the third version Representative María Elvira Salazar has authored since 2022. Its centerpiece, the Dignity Program, offers legal status, full work authorization, and indefinite renewable protection from deportation to illegal immigrants here since Biden’s border surge in 2021, in exchange for restitution and back taxes. The Dignity Program itself stops short of citizenship, but the bill folds in a separate Dreamer provision that carries Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients toward it.
The third is Chairman Glenn Thompson’s Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act, H.R. 9535 (SAWA). Most of it modernizes the H-2A guest-worker program, but tucked inside is a mechanism that lets illegal workers already here convert to legal H-2A status while waiving prior immigration violations, effectively rewarding unlawful presence in the United States.
The 2013 Obama-backed bill to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants failed, but just because the establishment couldn’t get it done does not mean they stopped trying. There is a distinct cohort of Republicans who chose to co-sponsor or even lead legislation that would achieve the same effect, just buried deep in the text.
Start with the smallest and most damning circle. Only four Republicans signed the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, the one bill that runs all the way to a green card — and three of them went on to back all three of the 119th Congress’ legalization measures. María Elvira Salazar of Florida wrote the Dignity Act, then added her name to the farm bill and the agriculture bill besides. David Valadao of California was an original cosponsor of all three. Dan Newhouse of Washington rounded out the trio, but is retiring. Which means two of the three most committed legalizers in the House Republican conference are asking the voters to send them back.
Another group joined two of the three: Mike Simpson of Idaho joined the farm and agriculture bills. James Baird of Indiana, Mike Kelly and Lloyd Smucker of Pennsylvania, Gabe Evans of Colorado, and Monica De La Cruz of Texas each backed both the Dignity Act and the agriculture bill; Don Bacon of Nebraska did the same and, like Newhouse, is heading for the exits. Tally it up and 10 House Republicans cosponsored two or more of this Congress’ legalization bills. Eight of those 10 want two more years in Congress.
On the Securing America’s Workforce Act alone, however, there are 37 Republicans:
Randy Feenstra (IA-04), David Rouzer (NC-07), Trent Kelly (MS-01), Celeste Maloy (UT-02), Nicholas Langworthy (NY-23), Pete Sessions (TX-17), Julie Fedorchak (ND-At Large), Claudia Tenney (NY-24), Mike Rogers (AL-03), Daniel Meuser (PA-09), John Moolenaar (MI-02), Joe Wilson (SC-02), Robert Wittman (VA-01), David Kustoff (TN-08), Chuck Edwards (NC-11), Laurel Lee (FL-15), David Taylor (OH-02), Rick Allen (GA-12), Michelle Fischbach (MN-07), Bill Huizenga (MI-04), Brett Guthrie (KY-02), Derrick Van Orden (WI-03), Mike Flood (NE-01), Austin Scott (GA-08), Brad Finstad (MN-01), Cliff Bentz (OR-02), Mike Bost (IL-12), Mark Messmer (IN-08), Troy Downing (MT-02), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01), Darin LaHood (IL-16), Tim Moore (NC-14), Jefferson Van Drew (NJ-02), Chuck Fleischmann (TN-03), Richard Hudson (NC-09), and two retiring members; Michael McCaul (TX-10), Ryan Zinke (MT-01).
Rep. Richard Hudson is no backbencher: he chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, the operation charged with re-electing the House majority, which means the man running the campaign to keep Republicans in power has just endorsed legalizing an illegal workforce.
These members will say that none of the bills are amnesty because they don’t grant de jure citizenship, but providing legal status and workforce authorization provides the permission structure for undocumented migrants to continue coming into the country and abusing our birthright citizenship process in the hopes they won’t be deported. It does not matter if the justification of the bill is out of humanitarian duty, corporate influence, or a misguided idea of what being American is. Supporters of these bills are actively working against the interests of not only American workers, but the base of the party they belong to.
Americans across the country are tired of their elected officials ignoring their concerns in favor of non-citizens. A country that wants to build things and become great again has to prize the people who do the building and the work to make it happen. You cannot lower home prices, improve wages, or reshore industry on a foundation of imported illegal labor.
In this midterm and beyond, the Republican Party has a chance to prove it cares about the working-class and President Trump’s agenda. These members would do well to remember that the American people won’t accept a subsidy to foreign labor at the expense of their own.
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Ryan James Girdusky is an author, podcaster, political consultant, and writer whose work has been featured in multiple publications including the Washington Examiner, The American Conservative Magazine, The Week, Human Events, and The Daily Caller. He is the host of the “It’s A Numbers Game with Ryan Girdusky” podcast. Follow him on X: @RyanGirdusky
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