President Trump would sign Republicans’ new immigration plan, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said Wednesday, saying they wrote legislation that matches his “four pillars” approach of combining legalization for “Dreamers” with limits to both illegal and legal migration in the future.
The bill, which the GOP will put on the floor next week, is still being finalized.
But in calling for a vote Mr. Ryan is leading the House where it hasn’t gone in nearly eight years: toward a vote on a broad immigration bill that would include a massive legalization for people in the country illegally right now.
Mr. Ryan said he doesn’t know yet whether the bill has enough support to pass, saying his members will have to make decisions when they see the final language that’s still being written. But he said the process marks a victory, with moderate and conservative Republicans seeking a middle ground on something the president can sign.
“Now what we have is an actual chance at making law and solving this problem,” he said.
GOP leaders said they’ll bring two immigration bills to the floor. One would be the enforcement-heavy bill written by Rep. Bob Goodlatte, which would revive the Obama-era DACA program and give it the imprimatur of law, giving Dreamers a renewable work permit and stay of deportation, but no new pathway to citizenship.
The other bill, still being finalized, would include a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, but would also curtail the long chain of family sponsorship and would cancel the visa lottery that doles out immigration passes by chance.
And the bill would include Mr. Trump’s sought-after border security changes, as well as changes that would allow for illegal immigrants to be held in detention and more quickly deported from the interior of the U.S.
In that respect the bill closely tracks with the approach the president laid out earlier this year.
“We’ve been working hand-in-glove with the administration on this to make sure we bring a bill that represents the president’s four pillars,” Mr. Ryan said.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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