‘Three-for-three’ plan to aid Dreamers falters

WASHINGTON — The White House said Wednesday that it does not favor an immigration agreement with Congress that would involve extending protections for young people in the country illegally for three years in exchange for three years of border wall funding.

Deputy press secretary Raj Shah said the administration continues to negotiate an immigration overhaul that would address the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that protects young people in the country illegally from deportation, while also stopping illegal immigration and modernizing the legal immigration system.

Two Republican officials briefed on the talks said the “three- for- three” proposal had been floated in stafflevel discussions in recent days.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The discussions were first reported by The Washington Post, which said the idea was being discussed as part of an upcoming spending bill. Congress must pass a new spending bill before a March 23 deadline, and congressional negotiators are aiming to release draft legislation as soon as this week.

President Donald Trump has proposed a path to citizenship for about 1.8 million people who were illegally brought to the U.S. as children, in exchange for $25 billion for a border wall with Mexico and other security measures, along with curbing legal immigration.

But his proposal never gained bipartisan momentum — with Democrats rejecting the legal immigration cutbacks even as they conceded funding for the border wall — and the measure won only 39 votes in a Feb. 15 Senate test vote. A bill that preserved the $25 billion in wall funding but set aside most of the legal immigration cutbacks won 54 votes, though still short of the 60 necessary for passage.

The Post reported that the outlines of the new immigration proposal are much narrower, said the officials familiar with the offer: a two- or three-year extension of the deferred-action program, which now protects about 690,000 people, coupled with an unspecified amount of border wall funding — hewing to a framework that some GOP moderates explored in the aftermath of February’s failed Senate votes.

A three-year deferred-action extension would essentially remove immigration from the congressional agenda until after the 2020 presidential election by removing the threat of deportation for the young people covered by the program, often referred to as Dreamers.

AshLee Strong, a spokesman for House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., declined to address the discussions. “We aren’t negotiating the [spending bill] through the press,” she said.

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday morning.

Ryan on Wednesday told reporters that he would not discuss specific aspects of the spending bill but said, “Our goal is to get this done as fast as possible. Stay tuned.”