Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Trump backs rise to citizen for Dreamers
But aide says ‘maybe’ path to be in immigration plan
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he’s open to an immigration plan that will provide a pathway to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of young people who were brought to the country as children and are now here illegally.
“We’re going to morph into it,” Trump told reporters. “It’s going to happen, at some point in the future, over a period of 10 to 12 years.”
But immediately after Trump spoke, a senior White House official cast doubt on Trump’s assurances, saying a pathway to citizenship for so-called Dreamers was “maybe” an option.
“That’s a discussion point,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because there was no authorization to discuss the issue publicly. The official added that Dreamers could immediately be given “legal status, as long as they behave themselves.”
Trump’s pronouncements — and the senior official’s addendum
— came as the White House announced it would be unveiling a legislative framework on immigration next week that it hopes can pass both the House and the Senate. The president’s remarks amounted to a preview of that framework. He said he’ll propose $25 billion for building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and $5 billion for other security measures.
Trump told reporters he had a message for the Dreamers: “Tell ’em not to be concerned, OK? Tell ’em not to worry. We’re going to solve the problem.”
But Trump has said repeatedly that any deal to protect those immigrants from deportation is contingent on money for the border wall and other security measures.
Trump was talking about the young people who had been protected from deportation and given the right to work legally in the country under former President
Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. Trump announced he was ending the program last year, but he has given Congress until March to come up with a legislative fix.
Trump said he was confident that a deal can be reached on the issue. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the framework to be unveiled Monday “represents a compromise that members of both parties can support.”
The White House was trying to take control of the process amid criticism that the president had taken too much of a back seat during recent negotiations and had sent mixed signals that repeatedly upended near deals
“After decades of inaction by Congress, it’s time we work together to solve this issue once and for all,” Sanders said. “The American people deserve no less.”
White House officials said their initial proposal would be limited to the 690,000 who were enrolled in DACA when Trump terminated the program. However, Democrats and some Republicans have pushed to extend legal protections to a far larger group of people in the country illegally — up to 1.7 million or more. White House officials said that would be left to Congress to negotiate.
SENATORS’ COMPROMISE TRY
Senators from both parties were making a fresh search for their own compromise immigration legislation, but leaders conceded that the effort wouldn’t be easy and were already casting blame should it falter.
Around three dozen senators from both parties met privately Wednesday, and two top lawmakers said they’d try crafting a compromise bill based on colleagues’ suggestions. The goal is to produce consensus legislation within the group that would be the starting point for Senate debate on immigration, which is expected to begin Feb. 8, said Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and
Dick Durbin,
D-Ill., their parties’ No. 2 leaders.
Cornyn said the Department of Homeland Security should be allowed to decide how to use any border security money. Those who want a permanent fix for deferred-action recipients and a pathway to citizenship should be willing to accept multiyear appropriations on border security, he said.
“I would suggest that for a temporary solution for the DACA recipients, you’re going to get a temporary solution on the border security and enforcement front,” Cornyn said.
If Democrats want just a one-year appropriation for border security, it might be appropriate to have a oneyear extension of DACA, Cornyn said. A permanent solution for the program recipients should be paired with a longer-term border package with actual funding assurance, he said.
The border package Cornyn is proposing is more than half the size of the $46 billion included in a 2013 measure that passed the U.S. Senate with broad bipartisan backing. However, that legislation also provided a pathway to legal status for 11 million illegal aliens in the U.S.
Durbin declined to comment about Cornyn’s proposal, but in remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday, he urged all sides to reduce their focus on the Mexico border in the immigration debate.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., vowed not to “let those who are anti-immigrant, who call giving the Dreamers hope ‘amnesty,’ block us. Because then we will fail, and it will be on the other side of the aisle that made that happen.”
Schumer spoke about 12 hours after Trump put the
onus on him. “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer fully understands, especially after his humiliating defeat, that if there is no Wall, there is no DACA,” the president tweeted late Tuesday. “We must have safety and security, together with a strong Military, for our great people!”
Sanders said the White House framework is based on dozens of conversations Trump and his staff have had with members of both parties and that “it addresses all of the different things that we’ve heard from all of the various stakeholders” during the past several months.
Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., said Trump called him Wednesday morning and wants to provide “dependability for these kids” but still expects a deal to include money for border security and his promised southern wall; to limit immigrants’ ability to sponsor family members; and to end a visa lottery aimed at diversity.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said that if senators cannot produce a compromise plan by Feb. 8, he would open a debate on immigration legislation that would be “fair to all sides.” That suggests both parties would be allowed to offer amendments.
Feb. 8 is the date legislation expires that reopened the government after a threeday shutdown, which began after Democrats demanded movement toward an immigration deal as the price for financing federal agencies.
Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., who co-chaired a series of meetings before and during the three-day government shutdown in an attempt to end the impasse, will continue hosting meetings on the subject in the coming days, according to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., another key broker on the subject.
“We have created a process for input. The goal is to create an output that’s good for America,” Graham said in a statement. Information for this article was contributed by Andrew Taylor, Jill Colvin, Alan Fram and Luis Alonso Lugo of The Associated Press; by David Nakamura and Ed O’Keefe of The Washington
Post; and by Laura Litvan and Steven T. Dennis of Bloomberg News.