Plan: ‘represents a compromise

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The White House announced Wednesday that it would be unveiling a legislative framework on immigration that it hopes can pass both the House and the Senate and land on the president’s desk.

The framework to be unveiled Monday “represents a compromise that members of both parties can support,” spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, as the White House  appeared to try to take control of the process amid criticism that the president has taken too much of a back seat during the negotiations and sent mixed signals that have 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.

Meanwhile, senators from both parties started a fresh search for their own compromise immigration legislation, but leaders conceded that the effort won’t be easy and were already casting blame should the effort falter.

Around three dozen senators, evenly divided among Republicans and Democrats, planned to meet late Wednesday in what No. 2 Senate GOP leader John Cornyn of Texas said was a chance to “get people thinking about a framework that might actually work.” Their goal is to produce a bipartisan package to protect from deportation the “Dreamers” — hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the U.S. illegally after being brought here as children — and to provide billions to toughen border security.

“We cannot 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,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Schumer spoke about 12 hours after President Donald 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, using the acronym for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which has allowed the roughly 700,000 immigrants to remain in the country. “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.

“There’s nothing currently on the table that addresses all of the concerns that we feel like brings all of these various stakeholders to the table, like this framework does. And the president wants to lead on this issue, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do,” she said.

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.

“He’s driving that a DACA solution is something he wants,” Perdue said.

Schumer said Tuesday that he’d pulled back an offer of $25 billion for Trump’s border wall with Mexico. An aide said Schumer had actually withdrawn the offer Sunday night after it became clear that there would be no quick compromise on protecting the Dreamers.