Earlier this month, Florida Congresswoman Maria Salazar (R) introduced the Dignity Act of 2025, a bill that would allow millions of immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally to stay.
She says it does not provide a path to citizenship, but Republicans are split on the bill. The Federation for American Immigration Reform opposes it because they have always opposed amnesty legislation, but the Evangelical Immigration Table is endorsing it.
Dr. Richard Land, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, does not go that far, but he proposed some of the same policies a decade ago.
"Barrett Duke, a colleague of mine, and I wrote a long article in which we proposed forms for immigration that included some of the things that are in this bill – having to come forward and register and pay a fine and undergo a background check and go on probation for up to 13 years to see if they minded their P's and Q's," he notes.
He adds that Salazar's Dignity Act would be a non-starter for him apart from President Trump's border policies.
"President Trump has secured the border," says Land. "Until we have demonstrated that we're going to secure the border, nobody's going to agree to any kind of pathway to residence for those who came here illegally."
He believes the measure's proposals are a sensible compromise on the immigration issue.
"The reality is we're not going to deport 20 million people," he asserts. "Physically, we can only deport about a million a year."
