Over 75 Groups Back Bipartisan Dignity Act, Betting Congress Still Cares About Reform

As Congress dithers, a broad coalition turns up the heat on Washington, wagering that a pragmatic immigration law could reshape the fate of millions—including tens of thousands in New York City.

The numbers speak to a quiet permanence. Between 475,000 and 600,000 undocumented immigrants call New York City home, according to the Migration Policy Institute. This silent constituency powers kitchens, cares for the elderly, and builds the city’s scaffold-festooned skyline, all while living in a twilight of uncertainty.

On Wednesday, more than 75 business, religious, and community organizations threw their support behind the so-called Dignity Act, a bipartisan federal proposal that aims to regularize the status of millions of immigrants nationwide and overhaul America’s threadbare immigration regime. Flanked by lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, advocates convened under the banner of the American Business Immigration Coalition Action, rolling out a coordinated “Dignity Tour” to barnstorm swing states and marshal public and political will. Their campaign begins in Pennsylvania, then heads to Arizona, Nevada, Texas, and assorted battlegrounds—each a crucible of both demographic transformation and electoral volatility.

Unlike pie-in-the-sky proposals or gravelly campaign rhetoric, the Dignity Act has corralled the endorsements of 40 members of Congress, evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. Its main architect, Republican Representative María Elvira Salazar, hailed the measure as “the true meaning of bipartisanship.” Democratic co-sponsor Verónica Escobar argued that the bill’s stakes stretch far beyond the border: immigration, she contended, is now entangled with core questions of the United States’ economic and demographic survival.

The fine print bears scrutiny. Under the Act, immigrants who have lived in the country for years—but lack legal status—could step out of the shadows, applying for temporary legal protection, work permits, and a reprieve from deportation. Applicants must pass background checks, pay fees, and meet other requirements; for the most established and law-abiding, future pathways to permanent residency may crack open, particularly for DACA recipients and similar cohorts.

Such provisions, while hardly oiling a floodgate, could deliver overdue stability to individuals woven into the city’s economy. Service sectors—restaurants, day cares, care homes—depend acutely on immigrant labor, something few municipal leaders now deny. The specter of mass deportations or legal precarity has chilled investment, dulled productivity, and frayed community trust. In effect, the city’s vaunted “sanctuary” status can go only so far, especially when federal law governs employment and residency.

Business interests, too, spy self-interest. Michael Deheeger, ABIC’s campaign director, described the Act as “pragmatic and balanced,” portending benefits for employers desperate to fill jobs, especially as New York’s labor market runs close to full tilt and the city’s population ages. With fertility rates paltry and retirements surging, the economic logic is not subtle: without fresh workers, growth will sputter, tax bases will erode, and care deficits will widen.

Politically, the Dignity Act attempts an alchemy both rare and risky: centrist consensus in an era of acrimony. Immigration remains a bludgeon in national discourse, particularly in cities like New York that have shouldered disproportionate flows of recent arrivals, such as the more than 183,000 migrants who entered the city since 2022. Officials, led by Mayor Eric Adams, have alternately preached compassion and pleaded for federal relief—mostly in vain. Yet bipartisan movement on Capitol Hill, however tentative, signals that exhaustion with inaction might be trumping tribalism—at least among a minority bloc.

Supporters couch the measure in the language of common sense. Republican Mónica de la Cruz described it as a means to “close gaps in the labor market,” while Democratic Representative Susie Lee remarked that it is a solution for contributors who “have no criminal background and have strengthened the economy.” For many New Yorkers—employers and workers alike—the realpolitik is appealing: legal stability yields economic clarity and deeper civic integration.

A patchwork country seeks a uniform path

For all this local urgency, the story is national—and, in a sense, perennial. The United States has not enacted a substantive overhaul of immigration since 1986, despite repeated flirtations with “grand bargains.” By some measures, the country’s economic dependency on migrant labor has never been starker. In Germany, Canada, and the UK, consensus has also frayed, but incremental paths to regularization still manage to emerge, especially for long-resident contributors. America’s impasse feels the more acute by contrast.

Of course, skepticism abounds. Detractors argue that extending legal standing to migrants—regardless of time served or tax paid—may incentivize further arrivals, stretching already taut public services. Others fear the bill will die the death of a thousand amendments, as previous compromises have. The odds of passage, in a fractious election year, remain tepid.

Yet the Act’s backers are not naïfs. Their focus on the workforce shortage, demographic drag, and fiscal logic is a recognition that policy must meet the country where it is, not where activists (or cable-news ideologues) wish it might be. Framing immigration as purely a matter of security or charity is, by now, a category error—one that New York, a city founded by strivers, best understands.

If the Dignity Act falters, the toll will be material and human. Cities like New York will limp along, forced to reconcile legal ambiguity with labour-market need and social reality. Ever more immigrants will subsist in a legal no-man’s-land—working, paying taxes, and building lives, yet perpetually on edge.

Washington’s see-saw on immigration is older than most landmarks in Manhattan. Yet if this coalition’s gamble on pragmatism—including a cross-country tour and improbable bipartisan applause—pays off, the city might finally see statute catch up with its social facts. That would bode well not only for New York’s millions, but for the nation’s overdue brush with realism. ■