House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said Tuesday that he’ll only allow the House to vote on an immigration bill President Trump will sign, effectively ruling out several bipartisan plans that fall short on border security.
“We’re not going to bring immigration legislation through that the president doesn’t support,” Mr. Ryan said when asked about the path forward.
Congress has less than four weeks until the March 5 phaseout deadline Mr. Trump set for the Obama-era DACA deportation amnesty, which is currently protecting nearly 700,000 illegal immigrant “Dreamers.”
Mr. Trump has proposed a four-pronged approach, with a generous pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million Dreamers coupled with limits to the chain of family migration, an end to the visa lottery and more border security, including funding for his proposed wall and legal changes to speed up deportations.
Mr. Ryan called that “a very serious and sincere offer of goodwill” toward the negotiations.
“That is what we should be working off of,” he said.
Mr. Trump’s plan is less than what House conservatives have demanded. They’re backing a bill that would couple a much less generous legalization of Dreamers with far more legal changes, including demanding all businesses use E-Verify to check their employee’s work status and cracking down on sanctuary cities.
Democrats, meanwhile, have opposed those strict measures, saying they want to see citizenship rights for more than 3 million illegal immigrants pass now, coupled with promises of border security in the future.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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