Republicans say decision on Dreamers must wait until 2018

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and Republican senators agreed not to deal with a needed fix for young immigrants in must-pass year-end spending legislation, according to some GOP lawmakers who visited the White House on Thursday.

Instead, they said, a solution would likely wait until next year for some 800,000 immigrants brought illegally to the United States as children. Those immigrants, known by supporters as Dreamers, are in limbo after Trump announced he was ending temporary deportation protections granted by the Obama administration and gave Congress until March to come up with a fix.

Democrats have indicated they want to use a year-end spending bill to force action on Dreamers. Their votes will likely be needed to pass spending legislation to keep the government running, so the Trump-GOP stance may not end up prevailing.

“No immigration bill on the omnibus or any other must-pass piece of legislation in 2017,” said Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., after exiting the meeting with Trump. “He agreed to that, as does the Senate leadership, and I think the vast majority of Republican senators.”

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said using the so-called “omnibus” spending bill to resolve the status of Dreamers was “the pipe dream of some Democrats.”

“It’s more likely than not to be part of a January-February time frame,” Cornyn said of dealing with immigration legislation.

Immigrant advocates have been pushing for action. In September, Democratic leaders said they had a deal with Trump to enshrine protections for the immigrants in exchange for border security measures short of a border wall. But the supposed deal immediately came into dispute and now appears to have totally unraveled.