President Trump said for the first time Wednesday that he is open to a path to citizenship for some younger undocumented immigrants known as "dreamers" in an immigration deal being negotiated by Congress, a potential breakthrough in the stalled talks. 
 
 In an impromptu discussion with reporters, Trump emphasized that his support of a citizenship path for about 690,000 immigrants would be contingent on securing $25 billion for a wall on the southwest border with Mexico and $5 billion for additional border upgrades. The president also is expected to continue his push to curb legal immigration as part of a deal. 
 
 But his remarks signaled what could prove to be a major shift for a president who ran a campaign with a hard line on immigration and last week rejected a bipartisan Senate proposal that included citizenship. 
 
 White House aides said the president would release a complete "framework" on Monday. The aides said that plan probably would grant immediate provisional legal status to those immigrants covered by the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that he terminated in the fall. That group would then be eligible to pursue full citizenship over 10 to 12 years. 
 
 "We’re going to morph into it," Trump said of citizenship. "It’s going to happen — over a period of 10 to 12 years. If somebody's done a great job and worked hard, it keeps the incentive to do a great job. ... I think it's a nice thing to have the incentive, after a period of years, of being able to become a citizen." 
 
 Lawmakers face a Feb. 8 deadline for a must-pass spending bill to keep the government open, but Democrats and some Republicans have said they will not support a long-term deal that does not address the future of the DACA program. The impasse over immigration led to a brief, partial government shutdown this week before lawmakers agreed Monday to a three-week funding extension. 
 
 Congress members have expressed exasperation that Trump has not clearly articulated his demands and vacillated over the past several weeks, at times signaling he was open to a deal but then reversing himself after speaking with aides or immigration hard-liners. A senior White House official said the framework would give lawmakers a clearer set of guidelines to help break the impasse. 
 
 "This president is committed to fixing this damn problem," a senior administration official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, told reporters at a background briefing. "What we were hearing constantly from [Capitol] Hill is ... 'Look, I’m not going to put my neck out and support something unless I know the president will sign it.'" 
 
 Yet Trump has reneged on previous statements about the dreamers, who have lived in the country illegally since they were children. Their moniker comes from the DREAM Act, bipartisan legislation first proposed in 2001 that would provide citizenship to the group under certain conditions. It has never passed Congress. 
 
 During his campaign, Trump promised to end DACA, which offered two-year work permits to undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children, on his first day in office. But after he was sworn in last year, Trump did not act, instead assuring dreamers that he would work out a deal to protect them. After Texas and several other states threatened to sue the Trump administration over the program, Trump announced in September he would terminate DACA but granted lawmakers six months to work out a solution before the bulk of work permits begin to expire March 5. 
 
 During the discussion with reporters, Trump joked to Chief of Staff John F. Kelly that he hoped to have a deal by the time he got back from a two-day trip to Davos, Switzerland, for an economic forum. Kelly, who initially was scheduled to travel with the White House delegation, will remain in Washington to keep negotiating with Congress on immigration. 
 
 White House officials said Trump's proposal for citizenship would be limited to the 690,000 who were enrolled in DACA when he terminated the program. However, Democrats and some Republicans have pushed to extend legal protections to a far larger group of dreamers – up to 1.7 million under the latest version of the DREAM Act. 
 
 Many of those who were eligible for DACA never applied, which immigrant rights advocates attributed to fears of registering with the government and costs associated with applying. White House officials said it would be left to Congress to negotiate over expanding protections beyond the DACA recipients. In all, there are an estimated 11 million immigrants living in the country unlawfully. 
 
 [In debate on ‘dreamers,’ an unresolved question: How many should benefit?] 
 
 Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who drafted the bipartisan immigration plan along with Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) that Trump rejected last week, welcomed Trump's statement Wednesday as a sign of "presidential leadership on immigration." 
 
 “President Trump’s support for a pathway to citizenship will help us get strong border security measures as we work to modernize a broken immigration system," Graham said in a statement. "With this strong statement by President Trump, I have never felt better about our chances of finding a solution on immigration." 
 
 Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), an immigration hawk whom Trump has consulted during the negotiations, said on Twitter that a path to citizenship for dreamers "must be done responsibly, guaranteeing a secure & lawful border & ending chain migration, to mitigate the negative side effects of codifying DACA." 
 
 Democrats said they had not been consulted about what the White House plans to release on Monday, according to senior aides. 
 
 The White House announcement on immigration came as 35 senators gathered late Wednesday to figure out how the chamber will proceed on its immigration debate. Meeting in the hearing room for the Senate Armed Services Committee, the group of Democrats and Republicans asked Sens. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Durbin to serve as a clearinghouse and sort out the parameters and timetable for the debate. Both senators are the deputy leaders of their respective parties and sit on a judiciary subcommittee on immigration policy. 
 
 Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), who co-chaired meetings before and during the three-day government shutdown in an attempt to end the impasse, will continue hosting meetings on the subject in the coming days, according to Graham. 
 
 “We have created a process for input. The goal is to create an output that’s good for America,” Graham said in an earlier statement. 
 
 Earlier Wednesday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the new White House immigration plan “represents a compromise that members of both parties can support. We encourage the Senate to bring it to the floor.” 
 
 Late last year, the administration sent a long list of immigration principles that lacked specifics. Trump said during a meeting with a large group of lawmakers at the White House two weeks ago that he would sign whatever plan Congress sent him. 
 
 A bipartisan group in the Senate led by Durbin and Graham presented a proposal to Trump last week that attempted to address his concerns. It included $1.6 billion for a wall and offered a path to citizenship for dreamers. Trump has rejected that plan. The president also rejected a last-minute offer from Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who reportedly offered $25 billion for border security and the wall. 
 
 On Tuesday, Schumer confirmed that he had pulled his proposal on Sunday during the shutdown. "We're going to have to start on a new basis, and the wall offer's off the table," he told reporters. 
 
 The announcement came as Schumer is facing backlash from some Democrats and immigrant rights groups for how he has handled negotiations with Trump. 
 
 [Schumer has rescinded offer to Trump on border wall funding] 
 
 If the lawmakers fail to agree on a spending plan by Feb. 8, the government could shut down again. 
 
 “We've taken into account all of the conversations that we've had, both at the presidential and the staff level, and tried to incorporate that into what we think addresses all of the different things that we've heard from the various stakeholders throughout the last several months,” Sanders said. 
 
 “After decades of inaction by Congress, it's time we work together to solve this issue once and for all,” she added. “The American people deserve no less.” 
 
 Ed O'Keefe contributed to this report. ||||| President Trump Donald John TrumpEx-CIA chief Brennan compares Trump to Bernie Madoff Timeline: The controversies of Scott Pruitt Warren: Trump should have fired Pruitt ‘28 scandals ago’ MORE on Wednesday said he is open to offering young immigrants a pathway to citizenship over 10-12 years, as long as he gets billions of dollars to pay for a border wall and other security measures. 
 
 Under his forthcoming immigration plan, which will be released Monday, Trump told reporters that protections for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program would "morph into" citizenship over that period. 
 
 “We’re going to morph into it. It’s going to happen, at some point in the future, over a period of 10 to 12 years," he said. 
 
 A senior administration official later clarified that citizenship is a "discussion point" in the plan and that young immigrants would have to meet certain conditions in order to gain it. 
 
 The official added the offer only applies to the nearly 690,000 immigrants who benefit from the Obama-era DACA program that Trump cancelled last fall. Those people are allowed to live and work in the U.S. without fear of deportation. 
 
 In exchange, Trump is seeking $25 billion to build his long-promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, in addition to $5 billion in other border security measures. 
 
 Trump also wants to limit family-based immigration and end or overhaul the diversity visa lottery, the White House said earlier Wednesday. 
 
 The president sought to reassure DACA recipients, whose fate has been left in limbo by his decision to scrap the program. 
 
 
 
 "Tell them not to worry about it," Trump said. "We're going to solve the problem. Now, it's up to the Democrats, but they should not be concerned." 
 
 Trump suggested he might extend the March 5 deadline when DACA expires if a deal is not reached before then, saying “I certainly have the right to do that, if I want.” 
 
 
 
 Trump made the comments during an impromptu question-and-answer session with reporters, who were meeting with other administration officials in the West Wing. 
 
 The president quipped that he wants a deal when he returns from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, over the weekend. 
 
 White House chief of staff John Kelly John Francis KellyMORE is scrapping plans to travel to Switzerland to stay back and work on immigration. 
 
 The comments are Trump’s clearest to date on what he wants in an immigration deal, and come amid complaints from Democrats and Republicans that Trump has been unclear in his demands. 
 
 The trade-off floated by Trump — wall funding in exchange for DACA protections — sounds similar to the deal that Sen. Charles Schumer Charles (Chuck) Ellis SchumerPelosi slams Trump's 'despicable attacks' on Waters at rally Trump bashes 'liberal Democrat Jon Tester' in Montana: He says one thing and does another Election Countdown: Calls to abolish ICE test Dem candidates | First round of House GOP 'Young Guns' | How Tester is handling Trump's Montana visit | Dem candidate won't back Schumer as leader | Super PACs ramp up Missouri ad buys MORE (D-N.Y.) offered him last week, before the three-day government shutdown. 
 
 Schumer portrayed the $25 billion offer of wall funding as a major concession, but on Tuesday declared that money is now "off the table." 
 
 The White House is expected to release an immigration “framework” early next week in a effort to jump-start stalled immigration talks on Capitol Hill. 
 
 Lawmakers have until Feb. 8 to pass a government funding bill, but Democrats have said they might not support it unless DACA is addressed. 
 
 Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has been working to reach a bipartisan deal on immigration, hailed Trump's remarks as a breakthrough. 
 
 “This statement represents presidential leadership on immigration that will allow us to solve a difficult problem. I truly appreciate President Trump making it clear that he supports a path to citizenship for DACA recipients. This will greatly help the Senate efforts to craft a proposal which President Trump can sign into law. 
 
 "With this strong statement by President Trump, I have never felt better about our chances of finding a solution on immigration." 
 
 The White House, however, has repeatedly ruled out a bipartisan proposal co-authored by Graham as unacceptable to the president. 
 
 - This story was updated at 7:13 p.m. ||||| CLOSE President Donald Trump said Wednesday he’s open to an immigration plan that would provide a pathway to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of young people who were brought to the country as children and are now here illegally. Time 
 
 President Trump makes his way to board Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House. Trump is heading to Davos, Switzerland to attend the World Economic Forum this week. (Photo: Mandel Ngan, AFP/Getty Images) 
 
 WASHINGTON — A White House proposal on immigration will contain a path to citizenship for up to 1.8 million young people brought into the United States as children as part of a package that also includes $25 billion for a border wall and other security measures. 
 
 President Trump's plan would also include a massive cut in family-based immigration and the end to a diversity visa lottery system that gives preference to immigrants from under-represented countries, according to a White House briefing for congressional staffers and Trump allies hosted by White House senior adviser Stephen Miller. 
 
 The proposal is designed to win 60 Senate votes and break a potential filibuster that could trigger another government shutdown next month, Miller said on the call, to which USA TODAY obtained access. 
 
 The path to citizenship has been among the most contentious issues in the immigration debate over the last decade, and Trump himself has taken inconsistent positions on it. But in an impromptu group interview with reporters Wednesday, the president said he's willing to consider citizenship for so-called DREAMers who came to the United States as children. 
 
 "If they do a great job, I think it's a nice thing to have the incentive of, after a period of years, being able to become a citizen," Trump said. That period would be 10 to 12 years, Trump said. 
 
 Yet the proposal to cut back family-based immigration is sure to draw fire from Democrats, as it represents a nearly 25% cut to legal immigration into the country. Under the new plan, Miller said that U.S. citizens and green card holders will only be allowed to sponsor their spouses and minor children to enter the country. 
 
 Congress passed a short-term funding bill over the weekend to keep the government open until Feb. 8; Democrats have insisted the Senate take up an immigration bill before voting on any additional funding. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement Thursday that he appreciated Trump laying out his immigration objectives. "I am hopeful that as discussions continue in the Senate on the subject of immigration, Members on both sides of the aisle will look to this framework for guidance as they work towards an agreement," he said. 
 
 The plan addresses four issues that the White House has insisted be included in any immigration fix: 
 
 ► DREAMers. The bill would provide a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, known as DREAMers. The number of immigrants who could qualify would be larger than the group protected under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. That program covered nearly 800,000 DREAMers, but Miller said the new plan could protect up to 1.8 million people, which is "substantially larger than the DACA population." 
 
 The immigrants who would be eligible to apply for citizenship may face a process that could take 10 to 12 years, according to Trump. "We're going to morph into it," Trump told reporters. "I think it's a nice thing to have the incentive of, after a period of years, being able to become a citizen." 
 
 Eligibility criteria would include requirements for "work, education and good moral character," according to a White House summary of the plan. 
 
 That plan mirrors a bipartisan Senate proposal that would allow DREAMers to become citizens after 12 years, or 10 years if they were approved for DACA. 
 
 More: After the shutdown, 4 things that make the road ahead to a 'DREAMer' deal rocky 
 
 Related: There are 3.6M 'DREAMers' — a number far greater than commonly known 
 
 CLOSE Thousands of immigrant "DREAMers" still await action on a possible pathway to avoid deportation. Democrat lawmakers are hoping assurances from Republicans, made for the stopgap budget deal, to take up the issue soon will bring action. (Jan. 23) AP 
 
 ► Border security. The White House has proposed a $25 billion "trust fund" to build at least parts of a wall along the United States-Mexico border. That represents a sharp increase from the $18 billion that the Department of Homeland Security requested in recent weeks, but also includes improvements to ports of entry on the Canadian border as well. 
 
 While the wall has been a sticking point for congressional Democrats, Trump said Wednesday: "If you don't have a wall, you don't have DACA." 
 
 The border wall could be a contentious issue among Democrats. In negotiations over a spending bill to keep the government open last week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York told Trump he would be willing to appropriate money for a border wall in exchange for protections for DREAMers, but was turned down. The government shut down early Saturday morning and did not reopen until Monday. 
 
 After a weekend of blaming each other for the breakdown in negotiations, Schumer rescinded his offer to fund the wall – and it is not clear, at this point, that Democrats would be willing to put it back on the table. 
 
 ► Family-based migration: The White House plan would restrict the practice of sponsoring relatives for green cards to "nuclear families," namely spouses and minor children. That practice, dubbed "chain migration" by Trump and other critics, has long been the main source of immigration into the U.S. 
 
 According to an analysis of Department of Homeland Security data, the proposed cut would eliminate nearly a quarter of the roughly 1 million immigrants allowed to enter the U.S. each year. 
 
 In 2016, the U.S. government granted lawful permanent residence known as green cards to 1.2 million foreigners. More than 260,000 green cards – 23% – were granted to parents, adult children, siblings, grandchildren, nieces and nephews of U.S. citizens and green card holders. 
 
 More: What is 'chain migration' and why does President Trump want to end it? 
 
 ► Visa lottery. Created by Congress in 1990, the diversity visa lottery grants 50,000 visas a year to people from countries under-represented in the U.S. In recent years, most have come from Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. 
 
 The White House plan would devote those slots to fill in the family-based and high-skilled visa backlog. After those slots are filled, the visa lottery would end completely, Miller said. 
 
 Like McConnell, many Republicans in Congress applauded Trump for putting forward a proposal without actually endorsing all the elements of the plan. Democratic leaders did not immediately respond, but some lawmakers saw immediate flaws in Trump's plan. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said in a tweet "There is no public policy justification for cutting legal immigration in half. None." 
 
 And liberal icon Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., called the plan "insulting" and an "anti-immigrant wish list." 
 
 By ending DACA, @realdonaldtrump subjected 800k Dreamers to deportation. Now he wants to hold them hostage to Steven Miller’s anti-immigrant wish list. It’s insulting. We already have a bipartisan solution to the Trump-created crisis: it’s called the Dream Act. #DreamActNow — Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) January 25, 2018 
 
 Some conservatives were equally skeptical of what they called an expansion of "amnesty" for immigrants now in the country illegally. “Amnesty comes in many forms, but it seems they all eventually grow in size and scope, said Michael Needham, CEO of the conservative political group Heritage Action for America. "Any proposal that expands the amnesty-eligible population risks opening pandora's box, and . . . should be a non-starter." 
 
 Contributing: Alan Gomez reported from Miami 
 
 Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2DPpagS
– President Trump says he wants Congress to have a deal on immigration and the border ready by the time he returns from the Davos forum in Switzerland—and he says he is open to the deal including a path for citizenship for DACA recipients. "We're going to morph into it," Trump said of citizenship for the Dreamers on Wednesday, per the Washington Post. "It’s going to happen—over a period of 10 to 12 years. If somebody's done a great job and worked hard, it keeps the incentive to do a great job," he said. "I think it's a nice thing to have the incentive, after a period of years, of being able to become a citizen." Trump stressed, however, that the deal for roughly 700,000 Dreamers would depend on securing $25 billion to build a border wall and $5 billion for other immigration-related spending. He said reporters could tell Dreamers they had "nothing to worry about." The proposal Trump outlined sounds similar to one that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said was "off the table" after the shutdown ended, the Hill notes. GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has been pushing for a bipartisan deal—and using the hashtag #TrumpDreamers—called Trump's remarks a "breakthrough." "I truly appreciate President Trump making it clear that he supports a path to citizenship for DACA recipients," said Graham, whose own proposals have been called "unacceptable" by the White House. Advocates for restricting immigration say they could support a pathway to citizenship, depending on how many people it applies to and whether it is combined with other measures to limit immigration, the Los Angeles Times reports.