WASHINGTON _ The House will consider two immigration bills next week in a compromise among Republican factions that has at least temporarily quelled a petition drive by lawmakers that would force floor votes on additional immigration measures GOP leaders don't want to take up.
The GOP compromise, reached late Tuesday, didn't finalize details of the legislation that will be considered, but it did lay out a strategy that different GOP factions said they could live with, according to participants in the meetings. Republican leaders opposed the petition and the floor votes it would trigger because, they said, it would give Democrats too much control to push the proposals they prefer.
"Members across the Republican Conference have negotiated directly and in good faith with each other for several weeks, and as a result, the House will consider two bills next week that will avert the discharge petition and resolve the border security and immigration issues," AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan, said in a statement.
Under the agreement, the House will vote on a conservative immigration bill sponsored by Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia that Ryan agreed to put to a vote, even though he previously said that it didn't have enough Republican support to pass. That bill would provide temporary protection for undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children while constricting legal immigration by limiting immigrants' ability to sponsor family members to come to the U.S. and by eliminating the diversity visa lottery.
Ryan also will schedule a vote on a to-be-determined compromise bill that would include border security measures along with a pathway to citizenship for the young immigrants, who are known as "Dreamers."
