“The House will consider two bills next week that will avert the discharge petition and resolve the border security and immigration issues,” House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office said in a statement. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo Ryan announces DACA votes as discharge petition stalls The development is a big loss for Republican moderates.

House Republicans will vote next week on two bills addressing the plight of hundreds of thousands of Dreamers who face possible deportation, circumventing an intra-party war over immigration and delivering a major blow to moderate Republicans.

The floor votes will effectively stop the effort by moderate Republicans in tandem with Democrats to force a vote on their immigration plans through a so-called discharge petition. The moderates do not appear to have the 218 signatures needed to circumvent leadership and force a vote on their own bipartisan bills to codify the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.


So they've been left to accept Speaker Paul Ryan's idea: One vote on a conservative proposal drafted by Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), and a second on a compromise package still being assembled by Ryan in consultation with moderates and conservative Republicans.

Neither is expected to pass, according to Republicans in all camps.

“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,” Ryan’s office said in a statement. “The full Conference will discuss tomorrow morning and we’ll have more to share at that point.”

The development effectively kills the discharge petition campaign, a staggering loss for moderates seeking to pass legislation protecting Dreamers. Under a tentative agreement between conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus and moderates, a vote on the Goodlatte bill would end the discharge petition.

Moderates are already suggesting that they could try to mount another discharge petition later in the year. But it‘s unclear that would yield a different result.

The two-vote solution is a victory for GOP leaders, who were able to dissuade Republicans from signing the petition and triggering the bipartisan votes. Many believed the discharge petition would be a huge embarrassment to the GOP since it would likely result in passage of a bill giving citizenship to Dreamers without any major immigration crackdown demanded by most Republicans.

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Conservatives also stuck together and ended up getting a vote on their own DACA legislation without having to agree to back any sort of compromise with their more pragmatic-minded colleagues.

Moderates, on the other hand, threatened to force votes on their own proposal but ended up lacking the support to follow through.

“We have a good number of colleagues who are willing to sign but would like to see agreement — that’s what they prefer, so that’s why they’re giving these negotiations as long as possible,” Curbelo told reporters Tuesday night. “It’s just in their personality to really give negotiations or diplomacy every possible opportunity to succeed and that’s what they’re doing.”

Curbelo and other moderates contended they were successful in making Republicans who didn’t want to address DACA at all to do so — even if the “compromise” legislation being worked out by leadership faces an uphill battle passing the House, let alone the Senate.

It's unclear if the two-vote approach will give political cover to moderates, who are extremely worried about blowback in their districts over the lack of a DACA solution. Many of the 23 GOP discharge petition signers hail from districts with large Hispanic populations who want to see a bill passed, not merely a show vote.

On Tuesday evening, GOP leaders, moderates and conservatives seemed to resign themselves to the fact that they were not going to reach a final immigration deal by the end of the day — despite making progress in recent days. Ryan then implored both sides to at least agree on a process for votes, if not a solution for Dreamers.

Conservatives, according to people following the talks closely, said they would no vote for any compromise bill until the discharge petition was off the table. At the same time, conservatives did not promise to back a compromise even after the discharge petition was shut off.

Instead, the immigration hardliners are pushing to include red-meat provisions that made moderates uncomfortable.

The bottom line of all the back and forth: Efforts to strike an immigration deal between moderates and conservatives are not going well.

While Ryan’s way forward agreement is not ideal for moderate Republicans, the group does not appear to have the support to do things its own way. After the last Democratic holdout, Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, added his name to the discharge petition Tuesday night, the centrists needed just two more signatures to secure votes on their proposed pathway to citizenship for Dreamers. According to Curbelo, one of the discharge petition authors, they had about half-dozen Republicans interested in signing.

But they came up short.

That's because Ryan on Tuesday personally spoke with the remaining Republicans considering signing on to the petition and asked them not to. They speaker told them he is confident that conservatives and moderates will come together on a DACA bill.

Privately, however, leadership — as well as moderates and conservatives — recognize that the compromise bill will likely fail.

“I spoke with Speaker Ryan today, who assured me that our Conference will vote, as early as next week, on an immigration bill that will give certainty to DACA beneficiaries and secure our border,” said Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), who considered signing on. “Given this significant progress, I will not sign the discharge petition today.“

The two-votes announcement came just a few hours after moderates floated a new offer to conservatives Tuesday night in hopes of reaching an immigration deal to shield Dreamers from deportation — but the proposal failed to break the impasse, according to multiple GOP sources.

The group of two dozen Republicans from swing districts — who for weeks threatened to join with Democrats to codify the DACA — offered to include enhanced enforcement measures in legislation in order to secure an agreement. Conservatives are demanding added enforcement as part of any deal that includes a pathway to citizenship for young undocumented immigrants who came here as children.

Both sides met to discuss the issue at a 5:30 p.m. meeting in Speaker Paul Ryan’s office.

“We have bill text,” said Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), one of the moderates leading the discharge petition effort, as he walked into the meeting. “I’m waiting to see if we all come together on it.”

Conservatives, however, want any deal to mandate that all employers verify the legal status of their workers, known as E-verify. They’ve also pushed for a more stringent asylum system, which immigration opponents believe has been routinely abused.

Moderates appear to have accepted the tougher asylum standards as well as a handful of additions put forth by conservatives over the weekend. But they say E-Verify is problematic. While some moderates back the employment verification system, they say it must be accompanied by a guest worker program allowing immigrants to work on farms and in construction, for example, jobs many Americans won’t take.

Adding both provisions would complicate an immigration deal they believe should be narrowly tailored, they argue.

GOP leaders floated the idea of having a separate vote on E-Verify and a worker program. But that was not enough to win over conservatives, according to multiple sources familiar with the talks.

The latest round of negotiations came as the moderates’ discharge petition appeared to be losing steam. Moderates were counting on Reps. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) and Newhouse to sign on, becoming the 217 and 218 signatories respectively. But House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy has convinced Ross to hold off by promising him a vote on a guest worker program before the August recess. Ryan did the same with Newhouse.