GOP Rep. Lawler pushes legal status for millions of illegal immigrants, calls mass deportation 'not realistic'

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) told ABC's "This Week" on Sunday that removing over 25 million illegal immigrants from the United States is "not realistic" — and pitched his Dignity Act as the conservative answer to a problem Washington has dodged for four decades.

It's a bold position from a Republican lawmaker, and one that deserves serious scrutiny from the right. Because Lawler isn't calling for amnesty. He's calling for something more specific — and the details matter.

The enforcement record speaks first

Before Lawler made his case for legalization, he made the case for enforcement — and credited President Trump directly. The southern border, Lawler argued, has been transformed, with Breitbart reporting:

"You know, porous Southern border needed to be shut down. President Trump did that. The fact is, we have had nine straight months of net-zero illegal border crossings. You've had 675,000 people deported, 1.9 million people. Self-deport."

Those numbers are striking. Nine straight months of net-zero illegal crossings. Nearly 2.6 million people were removed from the country through deportation and self-deportation combined. Lawler also noted that many of those removed were criminal aliens or individuals involved in the criminal justice system.

This is the part of the equation that the left never wants to acknowledge. Enforcement works. Deterrence works. And the Trump administration has delivered both at a scale that the Biden years made unthinkable — a period Lawler described as one where over 10.5 million migrants crossed the border, most of them illegally.

The American people watched that happen. They voted accordingly.

The Dignity Act pitch

Where Lawler parts from the enforcement-only lane is on what comes next. His argument: with 25 million illegal immigrants already in the country, many of whom have been here for decades and whose children and grandchildren are American citizens, a legal framework is needed. Not citizenship. Not a free pass. A framework.

Lawler outlined the terms on ABC:

"There's got to be a legal path forward, not a path to citizenship, but a legal path forward for people to come out of the shadows so that they can work legally, that they can pay their taxes, pay any back taxes owed, pay a fine, not collect government benefits, and not commit a crime."

The conditions he described are worth listing plainly:

• Legal work authorization — not citizenship
• Full tax compliance, including back taxes
• Payment of a fine
• No government benefits
• No criminal activity

That's not amnesty by any honest definition. Amnesty means forgiveness without consequence. Lawler's proposal imposes consequences — financial penalties, tax liability, exclusion from the welfare state, and the permanent condition that one criminal act ends the arrangement.

The 40-year failure

Lawler framed his proposal against a backdrop of bipartisan failure stretching back four decades. He said it twice: for 40 years, Washington has not solved the immigration crisis. He's right about the timeline, even if every faction disagrees on why.

The left's preferred approach has been to let the problem grow and then demand blanket amnesty as the only "compassionate" solution — usually bundled with expanded benefits and a path to voting. Republicans, meanwhile, have cycled through enforcement rhetoric that rarely translated into sustained policy until the current administration.

The result is 25 million people living outside the legal system. Not paying into it. Not accountable to it. That is, by any conservative measure, a problem — not because those people deserve sympathy points, but because a nation of laws cannot function with a shadow population the size of Texas operating outside them.

Where conservatives should be skeptical

None of this means Lawler's approach is without risk. Conservatives have heard "legal path forward" before, and the history of immigration deals is a history of enforcement promises that evaporate the moment legalization kicks in. The 1986 amnesty under Reagan was supposed to be the last one. It wasn't.

The Dignity Act's details — its bill language, enforcement mechanisms, and safeguards against mission creep — will matter far more than any Sunday show appearance. Lawler referenced the legislation by name but offered no specifics on its structure, co-sponsors, or legislative status. That gap should concern anyone who's been through this before.

There's also the question of incentives. Any legalization program, no matter how strict its conditions, sends a signal to the next wave of illegal border crossers. The enforcement side of the ledger has to remain ironclad — not just for nine months, but permanently — or the whole framework collapses into another cycle of tolerate, accumulate, legalize, repeat.

The real question

Lawler's core claim is simple: you cannot deport 25 million people. He may be right as a matter of logistics. But "not realistic" is a dangerous phrase in politics. It's the same phrase Washington used about securing the border before Trump proved otherwise. It's the phrase the establishment uses to justify inaction on everything from spending reform to bureaucratic accountability.

The question isn't whether mass deportation of 25 million people is realistic. The question is whether a legalization framework can be built that doesn't become the next amnesty — one that holds its conditions, maintains enforcement pressure, and refuses to reward lawbreaking with the eventual prize of citizenship and political power.

Lawler says his plan does that. The conservative movement will need to see the fine print before it signs.