Senate delays vote on imperiled immigration bill
The Senate voted Thursday morning to put off a decision on a measure that would provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants brought into this country as children.
The vote on the citzenship bill, known as the DREAM act, will probably be shifted to next week, said a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D).
Senate Democrats had planned to take up the bill--putting it up for a procedural vote that was likely to doom it. Instead, they voted for the delay, which will allow the Senate to take up an amended version of the bill that passed the House on Wednesday.
If the Senate were to pass the House version--an outcome considered unlikely at this point--it would go directly to the White House to be signed by President Obvama, who has pushed strongly for passage of the bill.
The DREAM Act passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 216 to 198 Wednesday night. But it faces an uphill climb in the Senate, where advocates need - and do not seem to have - 60 votes to push the measure through Senate procedures.
The DREAM Act would confer legalized status on undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States by their parents and have attended two years of college or signed up for the military.
Supporters of the measure say that it will avoid punishing those who had no say in coming to the country illegally and that it will result in better military readiness. Opponents of the measure, who include most Republicans but also some Democrats, say the measure is overly broad and creates a path to green cards and citizenship not only for those brought to the country as children, but indirectly through them for undocumented caregivers who knowingly broke the law.
The DREAM Act once had bipartisan support in Congress. The stiff headwinds now facing the measure in the Senate show how much the mood in the country has changed regarding illegal immigration.
Both advocates and critics of immigration believe that any attempt to overhaul the nation's immigration laws will face even an even stiffer fight in the next two years, given the rhetoric being voiced by the incoming Republican majority in the House of Representatives.