Back on the Table: U.S. Legalization and the Unauthorized Immigrant Groups that Could Factor in the Debate
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Highlights
With 11 million unauthorized immigrants embedded in U.S. communities, there are legislative and executive options for policymakers to consider to offer durable legal status.
- Roughly 11 million unauthorized immigrants lived in the United States as of 2021, about 60 percent of them for ten years or more. Key subgroups include DACA-eligible youth, Temporary Protected Status holders, and millions of essential workers.
- President Biden’s January 2021 proposed legislation would offer a broad pathway to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants present as of January 1, 2021, while narrower bills could legalize groups such as DREAMers, farmworkers, and those with U.S. family or employer ties.
- Executive tools—such as deferred action, parole in place, and Deferred Enforced Departure—can shield some unauthorized immigrants from removal but provide only temporary, revocable protections.
- Structural barriers, including three- and ten-year re-entry bars and an outdated registry date, prevent many long-term residents from adjusting to lawful permanent residence even when they otherwise qualify.
After several years on the policy sidelines, the debate over legalizing the unauthorized immigrant population was revived with President Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day pledge to send Congress a measure to grant legal status to the nation’s estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants. Given the failure of broad legalization efforts in 2006, 2007, and 2013, some on Capitol Hill are focusing on tackling the challenge in piecemeal fashion.
Drawing on MPI’s unique methodology to estimate the size and characteristics of the unauthorized population, this report offers numbers for unauthorized immigrant subgroups that have particularly strong equities, including DREAMers, Temporary Protected Status (TPS) recipients, and parents and spouses of U.S. citizens or permanent residents. It also takes stock of the populations that have provided essential services during the COVID-19 pandemic and faced outsized vulnerability to the disease: Workers in industries deemed essential ones, as well as farmworkers.
The report traces past legalizations and details the range and scope of legalization options that policymakers have, ranging from placing people on a pathway to citizenship, to limited and renewable legal status, or legal protections provided via executive action.
The inability to resolve the status of unauthorized immigrants over more than two decades has thwarted any prospects for broader reform of a U.S. immigration system that urgently requires updating. Amid this stasis, Congress has mounted new obstacles that make it more difficult for those who would otherwise have been eligible to legalize to do so, including the three- and ten-year bars on re-entry to the United States.
The report is part of MPI’s Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy Initiative, launched in 2019. The initiative is generating a big-picture, evidence-driven vision for the role immigration can and should play in America’s future.
Estimates for Different Legalization Bills
A number of legalization bills for different unauthorized immigrant subgroups have been introduced in Congress. MPI has modeled a few of them, including the American Dream and Promise Act and the DREAM Act of 2021.
Get estimates for the DREAMers, TPS or DED-eligible, and Legal DREAMers who could gain legal permanent residence under the American Dream and Promise Act here.
For MPI estimates of the DREAMers who could potentially gain legal status under the DREAM Act of 2021, check out this infographic.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
2 The Unauthorized Immigrant Population: A Profile
Unauthorized Immigrant Subgroups
3 Policy Options: Legislative Reform and Executive Action
A. Legislative Solutions
B. Executive Action
4 Conclusion
About the U.S. Immigration Policy Program
The U.S. Immigration Policy Program provides analysis of U.S. immigration pathways, the impacts of enforcement and other policies, and the characteristics of immigrant populations.
Rethinking U.S. Immigration Policy Initiative
This Initiative is generating a big-picture, evidence-driven vision of the role immigration can and should play in America’s future by providing policy ideas that reflect new realities.
