Newsletter: Booker T. Washington vs. the Dignity Act

The House left town this week with no plans to return until after the November elections. The Senate may cut out by the end of next week. Legislators want to get back on the campaign trail. Legislating will have to wait.

The bad news is nobody is coming to save us. The good news is we the people are the ones we have been waiting for, and the citizen lobby isn’t taking a break. 

We have work to do. While Congress heads for the exits, some Members are still pushing policies that would move us in exactly the wrong direction.

On Anniversary of Washington’s “Cast Down Your Bucket” Speech, Salazar Equates Amnesty to Emancipation

Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL) released an ad this week that urges President Trump to reward illegal immigration.

“I’m not talking about giving them amnesty,” Salazar says in a clear reference to her amnesty and expansion bill, the Dignity Act. “I’m talking about giving them a dignified life in this promised land.”

The immigration surge from 2021-2025 was the largest in U.S. history, doubling down on a broken promise that Washington, D.C. has left unacknowledged and unaddressed for sixty years. Voters decisively backed immigration reductions in the 2024 elections. The Dignity Act flies in the face of that mandate.

We have an alternative vision. And we need the citizen lobby to rise up and state our preference.

Take Action Here

In the most outrageous part of the ad, Salazar tells Trump: “You can be for immigration what Lincoln was for slavery…”

Her timing is bitterly ironic. This week marks the anniversary of Booker T. Washington’s plea to American employers and politicians to prioritize American workers who have been left behind.

Sept. 18, 1895 — Booker T. Washington’s Atlanta Exposition speech

As Roy Beck puts it in Back of the Hiring Line, Washington’s plea was basically “Fill your expanding factory jobs with your fellow Black Americans instead of importing workers from foreign lands.”

Washington was nine years old when Union troops emancipated him from slavery. As an adult he was America’s chief powerbroker for freed slaves and their descendants. I think he understood the difference between mass immigration and emancipation better than Rep. Salazar.

I believe Salazar truly cares for and admires the illegal workers she champions. Washington had similar feelings in his own time. He often held up immigrants as role models for grit and enterprise. But he did not admire mass immigration policies that encouraged employers to bypass their fellow Americans. His message to American industry was “Cast down your bucket where you are.”

You can care about immigrants without believing that American employers should import workers while Americans are struggling to find adequate work.

Learn more about Booker T. Washington’s speech in Back of the Hiring Line, Chapter 4.

Ignorance or Indifference, Americans Shut Out Either Way

17 million workers are either unemployed or working part-time because they can’t get full-time work, or want a job but are on the sidelines. Millions more prime-working-age Americans are not in the labor force at all.

Salazar doesn’t waste a single breath on them in her ad. Is she ignorant of their condition or indifferent? Either way, the results for Americans are the same.

There is yet one more bitter irony about Salazar’s bill. You can see it in the numbers:

• 17 million workers lack adequate job prospects in the U.S.
• 17 million permanent foreign workers would be added by the Dignity Act through amnesty and immigration increases. 

Fight Back

I’ll say this for Rep. Salazar: she’s fighting for her bill and her vision. We need more champions on our side, and we need them to fight harder. 

The 119th Congress has squandered most of its opportunity to deliver on its immigration mandate. They may be leaving Washington, but they will be checking their X accounts, emails, and voicemails. 

We Will Be Heard

The Latest Grades

If Congress ended today, its average grade of “D” would be among the lowest since we began these grades 30 years ago.

Congress’s overall letter grade: D

Average Great Solutions grade: 12.4%

This week’s movement: 4 positive letter grade change / 3 negative + 4 new Great Solution cosponsors

Are Your Members’ Grades Where You Want Them To Be?

Congress’s Failure Leaves Country One Ruling Away From Crisis

Asylum abuse was a key driver of the last border crisis. The Trump Administration hasn’t closed the legal loopholes – that’s Congress’s job – so much as used executive policies to make us less vulnerable to them. Those policies are covering for Congress’s inaction, and a court or a future president can undo them.

One of the key tools behind today’s historically quiet border has already been ruled unlawful by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. President Trump’s January 2025 proclamation, “Guaranteeing the States Protection Against Invasion,” made it much harder for economic migrants to game the asylum system for work permits and release into the interior.

The problem, according to George Fishman, is that “Congress has given aliens the right to apply for asylum even if ineligible to receive it.” Fishman served two decades as Republican Chief Counsel for the House Judiciary Committee’s immigration subcommittee. He warns that if the Supreme Court lets the ruling stand, we’ll be on our way to another crisis, and “the blame for any new border debacle would lie with Congress, not with the courts.”

In Other News

OPT: A proposed fee on Optional Practical Training cleared the White House. Reporting from the Hindustan Times, Times of India, and Bloomberg Law acknowledged that this “training” program is commonly used as a bridge to long-term residency for foreign students. In other words, higher education sells foreign students access to U.S. jobs.

H-1B: There are now over 10,000 public comments on the proposed H-1B fee. Add yours before Sep. 24, 2026.

Democracy: The population of immigrants and their offspring grew 55% from 2001-2024. Immigration shifted 22 House seats based on the 2020 Census. (See also: How Immigration Destroys Democracy)

1986 Amnesty: This week also marks the anniversary of the Senate voting to advance the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), otherwise known as the infamous “1986 Amnesty” that delivered on legalization but not the promised worksite enforcement. American workers are still an afterthought in immigration law.

Enforcement: Secretary Mullin filed a renewed finding that “an actual or imminent mass influx of aliens” requires a “continued federal response.” He also reports that as of August 11, there are over 2 million non-detained aliens with final orders of removal.

NumbersUSA In The News

This week we released a new report finding that California has lost more than 3,740 square miles of farmland and natural habitat to development since 1982. That’s an area equal to three Yosemite National Parks. NumbersUSA’s Scientific Director Leon Kolankiewicz found that population growth – now almost entirely a result of immigration policy – drove 91% of that loss. Our press release was reposted 177 times in its first 48 hours.

A statewide poll we commissioned from Noble Predictive Insights found that 93% of likely California voters want the state’s remaining open space protected. That includes 95% of Democrats and 93% of Republicans. 73% support requiring all employers to use E-Verify. 

My colleague Jim Robb talked about the Biblical interpretations of “sanctuary” and the real effects of immigration on local communities on Bott Radio Network’s Faith in Action, and The Bill Martinez Show (59:21–1:12:57).

NumbersUSA’s Andre Barnes joined The Janelle King Show to trace a history the immigration debate often forgets, from Booker T. Washington to Barbara Jordan. He also returned to Dana With The Data to examine how decades of population shifts in Los Angeles have affected Black workers. Here’s a clip from Janelle King:

Quotes of the Week

“[I]t was another good month pay-wise on net for blue collar workers in parts of the economy that had been employing lots of illegal aliens.” – Alan Tonelson, Reality Check

“We’d trade five Americans for just one [undocumented worker].”  – Hallie Shoffner, , Arkansas Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate

“Cast down your bucket where you are.” – Booker T. Washington