A Seat at the Table

This article was authored by Loren Steffy

Restaurant companies have historically kept their heads down on politics. Taking a public stance on anything as radioactive as immigration was a reliable way to alienate customers. But now, the National Restaurant Association has endorsed a comprehensive immigration reform bill. The Texas Restaurant Association has joined a national coalition lobbying Congress. Industry leaders are flying to Washington to meet with members of Congress.

More than one in five restaurant and foodservice workers were born outside the United States, according to the National Restaurant Association. When the flow of immigrant labor slows, the industry feels it first and feels it hardest.

“Without immigrants, we just don’t have the people we need to be successful as an industry,” Texas Restaurant Association chief public affairs officer Kelsey Erickson Streufert told Restaurant Business. “The math of running a restaurant has never been harder. We have data showing that if we stick to our current immigration policy playbook, food costs are going to increase even more.”

Everyone agrees the system is broken, but no one agrees on the fix, so the legislation is piling up rather than passing. Most of the proposed bills focus on things like expanding legal pathways for new workers, protecting the immigrant workers already here, and holding employers accountable for verifying who they hire.

The Dignity Act of 2025, for example, is a bipartisan bill from Reps. María Elvira Salazar (R-FL) and Veronica Escobar (D-TX) that tightens stricter border security and requires mandatory adoption of E-Verify, the government’s electronic system for employers to confirm new hires’ immigration status. (E-Verify has shortcomings, as I’ve noted before.)

The bill also would provide a pathway to legal status for undocumented immigrants who’ve lived and worked here for years. As of this summer it had cleared 100 organizational endorsements and drawn the support of 40 members of Congress — but still hasn’t reached a House vote.

Meanwhile, the State Sponsored Visa Pilot Program Act of 2026, introduced by Sens. John Curtis (R-UT) and Mark Kelly (D-AZ), which would let individual states sponsor temporary workers based on their own regional labor needs. Other proposed legislation includes the American Dream and Promise Act for Dreamers, plus a pair of mandatory E-Verify bills. Congress is talking past itself in four directions at once.

A national coalition

The Texas Restaurant Association has thrown its weight behind the Dignity Act through the Seat the Table coalition and its national “Keep Food on the Table” campaign — a partnership with the American Business Immigration Coalition, the James Beard Foundation, and dozens of agriculture and hospitality groups. The appeal is specific.

As the Dallas Observer reported, the bill’s Dignity Program would let otherwise law-abiding immigrants who’ve been in the country continuously since December 31, 2020, apply for temporary work permits — covering the whole food pipeline, from farms and ranches to meatpacking plants to restaurant kitchens.

“The goal is to create temporary work permits for long-term, law-abiding immigrants throughout the food pipeline,” Streufert told the Observer. “All are critically understaffed. And if we don’t address those staffing shortages, we’re going to continue to see food prices increase, not only for restaurants, but for all American families.” The coalition’s mantra, she said, is that you shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The Dignity Act would be the first wide-ranging immigration reform since the Reagan-era overhaul of 1986.

Under the Dignity Program, participants could stay and work for seven years — provided they pay $1,000 and any back taxes, plus another $7,000 over the term, plus 1% of their adjusted gross income. They’d receive no federal benefits. And at the end of seven years they could apply again, and again, indefinitely. What they could never do is become citizens. The program offers no path to it.

Thomas Kennedy, a policy analyst at the Florida Immigration Coalition, told the Observer the arrangement amounts to a permanent underclass paying income taxes — with a 1% surcharge — and never earning a political voice.

“Let’s not call it dignity,” he said. “This is the second-class citizenship act.” His objection underscores the real tension over each of these bills. As a nation, we want the labor, at least economically speaking, but we can’t agree on what we owe the laborers. Reasonable can disagree, and the Dignity Act, for better or worse, is a compromise.

When a politically cautious industry like restaurants starts lobbying Congress, joining coalitions, and flying executives to Washington, it’s more than just another corporate lobbying effort. It’s a distress signal. For restaurants — and a growing number of other businesses — immigration has become a balance-sheet issue. The legislation stacking up in Congress comes amid a burgeoning labor shortage that operators can no longer absorb.

As I’ve pointed out, immigration is, above all, a labor-supply and workforce question. Strip away the culture war and what’s left is the economics — too many open jobs, too few workers, and prices that climb until someone does something about it. The restaurant industry has read the numbers and picked a side. I’ve long argued that we won’t have meaningful immigration reform until businesses get behind it. That may finally be happening.

Too many members of Congress, on the other hand, still overwhelmingly prefer political grandstanding and short-term thinking over meaningful action. The longer they fail to act, the bigger the check they’re sticking the American people with.