Proposal № 106 of 250 · Released October 17, 2026
The Guest Settlement
About 15.8 million people live in the United States without authorisation. Four in five have been here more than five years; nearly half, more than twenty. The country has argued for a generation about whether to deport them or make them citizens, and has done neither, because both answers are wrong. There is a third. Give the long-resident the guest status of № 003: honest papers, taxes, the scan, the compact's rules, and no path to citizenship or the vote. The line between member and guest holds. The people already inside it get a document that says which they are.
The problem
The unauthorised population of the United States reached an estimated 15.8 million in mid-2024, by the Migration Policy Institute's count, after holding near 11 million for a decade. The recent growth is recent arrivals, and № 100 and № 101 address them. The older population is the one the country has never resolved. As of mid-2023, 80 percent of unauthorised immigrants had lived in the United States for five years or more, and 45 percent for twenty years or more. They work, most of them on the books under false or borrowed numbers; they pay sales taxes, property taxes through rent, and, by the Social Security Administration's estimate, billions a year into a system that will never pay them; they have children who are citizens; and they can be removed at any time, which is a fact that shapes everything else about their lives and the lives of the towns they live in.
The two answers the country has debated are both impossible, and each side knows it. Removing fifteen million people would empty industries, separate millions of citizen children from their parents, and cost, by any serious estimate, hundreds of billions of dollars over a decade. Making them citizens rewards the crossing over the queue and is, for that reason, politically unattainable; every attempt since 1986 has failed, and the 1986 amnesty's lesson, that legalisation without enforcement invites the next wave, is the reason.
The impasse rests on a false choice, and № 003 already dissolved it. That proposal argued that most people who come to the United States do not want citizenship; they want to work, lawfully, and go home richer or stay as guests. It created a five-year visa with no path to citizenship, a fifth of pay banked for the trip home, and a credential that passes the scan of № 102. The Open Door was written for the people at the border. This proposal opens it from the inside.
The proposal
The Guest Settlement: any unauthorised resident who has lived in the United States for five years or more, has no conviction on the list of № 101, and comes forward within a two-year window receives the guest status of № 003: a five-year renewable credential, the right to work lawfully, the escrow, the English Hour, the Removal Rule, and no path to citizenship, permanent residence or the vote. The settlement is offered once, closes on a date, and is paired with the Employer Penalty of № 102 so that the window it closes stays closed.
How it would work
- Who. Five years of continuous residence, proven by the ordinary documents of a life: tax filings, leases, school records, pay stubs. No conviction on the felony list of № 101. Registration within two years of enactment; after the window closes, the settlement is closed, and a person who did not come forward is subject to the ordinary law.
- What. The guest credential of № 003, for five years, renewable on the same terms as any guest's: lawful work, the scan, the English Hour of № 104, and a fifth of pay banked in escrow and returned on departure or held against the compact's rules. The settled guest has what the guest at the border has, no more and no less.
- What not. No path to permanent residence. No path to citizenship. No vote, at any level. No federal benefits beyond what a guest receives under № 004, which is honest, paid private coverage. The settled guest is a guest, permanently, and the credential says so. A person who wants to become a citizen may leave and apply from abroad through the ordinary door, at the back of the ordinary queue.
- The children. Citizen children of settled guests are citizens with every right of any citizen, including Baby Shares under № 008 and CitizenCare under № 004. Non-citizen children who arrived before the age of ten and grew up here are the one exception the settlement makes: they receive permanent residence, on the reasoning of № 011, that a person who did not choose the crossing and has no other country is a member by fact if not by paper.
- The pair. The settlement takes effect on the same day as the Employer Penalty of № 102 and the Turnstile of № 022. The 1986 amnesty failed because it legalised the present without closing the future. The settlement legalises the present as guests, and the scan and the exit record close the future.
- The taxes. Settled guests file under their own numbers and pay what everyone pays. The contributions already made under borrowed numbers are not refunded and not credited; they are the price of the years before the settlement.
The numbers
The eligible. About 12 million of the 15.8 million have five years' residence; fewer than that will register, and some will be excluded by the conviction rule. On the order of 8 to 10 million settled guests, if the take-up resembles 1986's.
The taxes. Unauthorised immigrants are estimated to pay on the order of $100 billion a year in federal, state and local taxes already; settlement moves the on-the-books share toward the whole, and the escrow banks a fifth of every settled guest's pay, which at an average wage of $35,000 for 9 million guests is $60 billion a year deposited, returned on departure or held under the compact.
The removal cost avoided. Estimates of removing the whole unauthorised population run from $300 billion to nearly $1 trillion over a decade. The settlement costs the price of issuing credentials.
The wages. Studies of the 1986 legalisation found wage gains of 6 to 13 percent for those legalised, as lawful status let them change jobs and report abuse. The Wage Theft Register of № 084 and the Employer Penalty of № 102 both work better when the worker can complain.
The honest objections
"This is amnesty." Amnesty forgives and admits to membership. The settlement forgives nothing: the years before it earn no credit, the crossing earns no path, and the settled guest can never become a citizen or vote. It is a status, offered once, with the compact's obligations attached and the compact's penalty for breaking them. A reader who thinks a guest status with no path to citizenship is a reward has not read № 003, which most of the world's migrants would accept tomorrow.
"A permanent guest class is un-American." It is the arrangement most rich countries have and the one the United States has by accident today, without the papers. The honest comparison is not between the settlement and citizenship, which is not on offer; it is between the settlement and fifteen million people with no status at all. The catalog's rule is that the line between member and guest is held firmly and drawn humanely, and a guest with a document and rights is the humane side of the line.
"The 1986 amnesty caused the next wave, and this will too." It did, because it closed nothing. Item 5 is the answer: the settlement arrives with the scan, the exit record and the employer penalty, on the same day, so that the window it opens for the present is the last such window. A future Congress can reopen it, in public, if enforcement fails. The proposal's bet is that enforcement aimed at the employer, for the first time, will not fail.
"Excluding them from citizenship forever creates a resentful underclass." A settled guest may leave and apply from abroad; the door is not locked, it is at the back of the queue where the people who waited are. And the guests' children who are citizens are citizens in full. The resentment the objection fears exists today, among fifteen million people with nothing; a document, a lawful job and a bank account are its remedy, not its cause.
"The children who arrived young should not get more than their parents." They should, and № 011 says why: a person who was carried across the border at four and has no other home is a member by every measure but the paper. The parents chose; the child did not. The settlement draws that line where the moral fact is.
Sources
- Migration Policy Institute, Following Years of High Border Arrivals, the U.S. Unauthorized Immigrant Population Hits New Peak (2025), and Changing Origins, Rising Numbers: Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States, on years of residence
- Pew Research Center, U.S. Unauthorized Immigrant Population Reached a Record 14 Million in 2023 (August 2025)
- Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Tax Payments by Undocumented Immigrants (2024)
- Social Security Administration, Office of the Chief Actuary, Effects of Unauthorized Immigration on the Actuarial Status of the Social Security Trust Funds
- Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986; Kossoudji and Cobb-Clark, "Coming out of the Shadows: Learning about Legal Status and Wages from the Legalized Population," Journal of Labor Economics (2002)
- American Immigration Council, Mass Deportation: Devastating Costs to America (2024)
- Proposals № 003 (The Open Door Compact); № 004 (CitizenCare); № 008 (Baby Shares); № 011 (The Citizenship Election); № 022 (The Turnstile); № 084 (The Wage Theft Register); № 101 (The Removal Rule); № 102 (The Employer Penalty); № 104 (The English Hour)