We want people to come here, work hard and build a life. Most Americans agree. In a June 2026 Gallup poll, 75% favored giving immigrants living here illegally a chance to become citizens, and 81% favored it for people brought here as children.[1]
A pathway to citizenship is about people who are already part of our towns. In 2022, nearly 80% of undocumented immigrants had lived in the U.S. for more than a decade, according to the Department of Homeland Security's own estimates.[2] About 8.3 million of them were in the workforce, just under 5% of all U.S. workers.[3] They're already our neighbors and coworkers. Pretending we'll deport all of them isn't a plan. Neither is leaving millions of people in limbo forever.
We've done this before. In 1986 President Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act.[4] Nearly 2.7 million people became permanent residents under it.[5]
The "get in line" crowd should look at the line. At the end of May 2026, the immigration courts had 3,241,899 cases waiting.[6] For people trying to come legally through work, no single country can get more than 7% of the green cards, so India and China get the same number as Iceland and Luxembourg. The National Foundation for American Policy estimates that an Indian professional with an advanced degree who applies for an employment green card now could face a wait of 179 years.[7] A legal path that takes decades isn't a path.
So pass a pathway to citizenship for people who are already here, add judges and staff so cases are decided in months instead of years, and raise the caps so the legal line actually moves.
The objection: "They take American jobs"
In 2016 the National Academies of Sciences looked at decades of research and found that "the impact of immigration on the wages of native-born workers overall is very small," with "little evidence that immigration significantly affects the overall employment levels of native-born workers."[8] The same report found that where there are negative effects, they fall mostly on earlier immigrants and on workers who didn't finish high school. That's a case for strong labor protections for everyone.
Sources
- Gallup, "Americans' Support for Immigration Down, Still Strong," July 9, 2026 (poll of June 1-15, 2026). https://news.gallup.com/poll/712289/americans-support-immigration-down-strong.aspx
- American Immigration Council, summary of DHS Office of Homeland Security Statistics estimates for January 2022, June 7, 2024. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/?p=34075
- Economic Policy Institute, "Unauthorized immigrants: FAQ," April 15, 2025 (citing Pew Research Center). https://files.epi.org/uploads/FAQ-Unauthorized-Immigrants-v5.pdf
- Ronald Reagan, "Statement on Signing the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986," November 6, 1986 (Reagan Library). https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/statement-signing-immigration-reform-and-control-act-1986
- Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics, "Naturalization Rates among IRCA Immigrants: A 2009 Update," October 2010. https://ohss.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2023-12/Naturalization%2520Rates%2520IRCA%2520Immigrants%25202009.pdf
- TRAC Immigration, July 23, 2026. https://tracreports.org/tracatwork/detail/A6428.html
- National Foundation for American Policy, "Employment-Based Immigration Backlogs," August 2026. https://nfap.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Employment-Based-Immigration-Backlogs.NFAP-Policy-Brief.August-2026.pdf
- National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, "The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration," September 2016. https://www.nationalacademies.org/news/2016/09/new-report-assesses-the-economic-and-fiscal-consequences-of-immigration