Sedeño is the immigration policy analyst for the Latino Policy Forum.
“¡Tengo treinta años aquí! ¡No califico para esto!” ( “I’ve been [in this country] for 30 years! I do not qualify for this!”)
The words of this long-time immigrant worker were not easily forgotten as dozens of immigrants, advocates, elected officials, labor unions, and faith and business leaders gathered at The Resurrection Project on June 19 to respond to President Joe Biden’s recent actions on immigration. Once implemented, these actions will streamline paths to work authorization and legal status for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants and DREAMers across the country — the largest move since the Obama administration instituted the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2012.
The proclamation, as announced, would help immigrants in two key ways:
- Allow certain undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens to apply for “ parole-in-place (PIP),” a protection against deportation, while inside the country. This will allow many to access a work permit and legal permanent residency. Approximately half a million undocumented immigrants and their children will be eligible. Eligible spouses and children will be able to apply beginning Aug. 19.
- Allow DACA recipients and other DREAMers, who have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher and who have received an offer of employment from a U.S. employer in a specialized field related to their degree, to more quickly receive work visas, which in time, could provide a pathway to legal permanent residency.
The announcement came just one month after the Illinois General Assembly became the largest governing body in the country to pass a resolution calling on Biden to use his executive authority to grant work permits through parole to all long-term undocumented immigrants in Illinois amid prolonged workforce shortages.
“[Passing HJR 69 was] a declaration of our state’s commitment to both economic pragmatism and human rights,” said Latino Policy Forum President and CEO Sylvia Puente.
Every year, 400,000-plus workers contribute $1.9 billion to the Illinois economy without official work authorization. Nearly 30 percent have been residing in the United States for 20 or more years. The resolution made it very clear: granting work permits to this population would increase tax contributions to the state, secure fair wages and protections for workers, and keep families and businesses thriving.
Passing HJR 69 took an enormous amount of issue education, advocacy and organizing by 100-plus members of the Work Permits for All campaign, which officially launched in August of last year, alongside the national Here to Work Campaign. Advocates and allies organized rallies and press conferences across the country, including in Washington, D.C., where over 2,000 people attended to express their support. The first political responses came from the Chicago City Council and the Cook County Board, which passed the first resolutions calling for work permits for the long-term undocumented in December 2023.
In the winter and spring of 2024, rallies and educational workshops continued, Mayor Brandon Johnson announced his public support, and by the end of May, HJR 69 passed with overwhelming support in both chambers of the legislature.
As a member of the campaign, the Latino Policy Forum quickly became a leader in developing a legislative advocacy strategy, policy language and analysis. Biden’s announcement provided the one thing the campaign needed and hoped for — political will.
However, as the immigrant worker’s justified frustration reminds us, the new PIP policy will only grant work permits and protections to some — not all undocumented immigrants. There are many immigrants who will be left out — spouses who were unable to marry before the arbitrary cutoff date, spouses who have been in the country only nine years but still pay taxes, parents of U.S. citizens, long-time workers, caregivers, etc. Many immigrants who are ineligible for PIP will not even be able to obtain a work permit.
For many immigrant and worker advocates, work permits for all is still the goal, along with a meaningful pathway to citizenship. For far too long, immigrant communities have had to collectively celebrate wins even though many will not benefit. While this action is a significant step forward in protecting mixed-status families, more work needs to be done to secure relief for the other 10.5 million undocumented immigrants.
A version of this article was first published by the Latino Policy Forum and has been republished with permission.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.