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Immigration bill fails Senate test vote
By Donna Smith 31 minutes ago
A compromise bipartisan plan to overhaul the nation's immigration law failed on Friday on its first test vote in a sharply divided U.S. Senate.
Just a day after leaders from both parties agreed to the plan and predicted it would be widely embraced, new bickering shelved the measure amid complaints it would give amnesty to immigrants who illegally entered the country.
Backers of the bill fell 22 votes short of the 60 needed in the 100-member Senate to overcome procedural hurdles and move the bill forward.
The Senate action complicates and could ultimately doom efforts to pass comprehensive reform legislation in this election year. The deal had been struck in the face of opposition by some Republicans who said a plan to give some of the 11 million illegal immigrants a path to U.S. citizenship was amnesty and would reward them for breaking U.S. immigration laws.
Both sides blamed each other for the stalemate.
"A lot of people are asking what happened between the optimism of yesterday morning ... and this morning where it looks like everything has been obstructed, stonewalled," said Senate Majority Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican.
"This is no place for stonewalling or obstruction," said Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada. "Yet that's where we are."
Lawmakers planned to leave Friday for a two-week break and it was unclear when the Senate would return to the legislation.
In two weeks if their mail pile hits the ceiling, they won't try an slip it by us either.Kathianne said:Yesterday6 it was 'all but done.' Today, 22 votes short. Anyone really wonder what happened inbetween? Emails and phone calls, no time for letters...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060407/pl_nm/usa_immigration_dc
Got my vote. Any effect on the US economy will be short lived, they'll be lined-up to re-enter "LEGALLY".ThomasPaine said:supporting this bill. It was a pathetic attempt to "legalize' the illegals and therefore merely amnesty. The American people are NOT going to sit idly by and allow either political party to kowtow to hispanic voters with an amnesty bill. It isn't going to happen. The illegals shot themselves in the foot big time with their "protest" marches which were in essence a demand for amnesty. This issue is critical to the future of this country. Either we are a soverign nation or we have an open border which will dilute our soveignty to nothing. DEPORTATION NOT AMNESTY!!!!
Senate Shelves Immigration Bill
Senate Shelves Immigration Bill After Partisan Bickering, Leaving Legislation's Prospects' in Doubt
By SUZANNE GAMBOA
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The Senate sidetracked sweeping immigration legislation Friday, leaving in doubt prospects for passing a bill offering the hope of citizenship to millions of men, women and children living in the United States illegally.
A carefully crafted compromise that supporters had claimed could win an overwhelming majority received only 38 of the 60 votes necessary to protect it from weakening amendments by opponents.
Republicans were united in the 38-60 parliamentary vote but Democrats, who have insisted on no amendments, lost six votes from their members.
Democrats and Republicans had been blaming each other Friday for problems stalling the progress of bill.
Scheduled votes to break the logjam failed and both supporters and opponents of the bill will have to wait until Congress returns from a two-week spring recess, if then.
"It's not gone forward because there's a political advantage for Democrats not to have an immigration bill," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa.
He said Democrats perceive a benefit in having only a GOP-written House bill that criminalizes being an illegal immigrant. That bill has prompted massive protests across the country, including a march by 500,000 people in Los Angeles last month.
Democrats blamed Republicans for insisting on amendments that would weaken a compromise that Senate leaders in both parties had celebrated Thursday.
"This opportunity is slipping through our hands like grains of sand," said assistant Senate Democratic leader Dick Durbin of Illinois.
President Bush had applauded the Senate's efforts to draft a comprehensive immigration bill. "I would encourage the members to work hard to get the bill done prior to the upcoming break," he said Thursday.
The election-year legislation is designed to enhance border security and regulate the flow of future temporary workers as well as affect the lives of illegal immigrants.
It separates illegal immigrants now in the U.S. into three categories.
Illegal immigrants here more than five years could work for six years and apply for legal permanent residency without having to leave the country. Those here two years to five years would have to go to border entry points sometime in next three years, but could immediately return as temporary workers. Those here less than two years would have to leave and wait in line for visas to return.
The bill also provides a new program for 1.5 million temporary agriculture industry workers over five years. It includes provisions requiring employers to verify they've hired legal workers and calls for a "virtual" fence of surveillance cameras, sensors and other technology to monitor the nearly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexican border.
The acrimony in the Senate at Thursday night's end was a sharp contrast to the accolades 14 members of both parties traded just hours earlier when they announced their compromise.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist called it tragic "that we in all likelihood are not going to be able to address a problem that directly affects the American people."
The House has passed legislation limited to border security, but Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and other leaders have signaled their willingness in recent days to broaden the bill in compromise talks with the Senate.
But Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., said anything with what he called amnesty would not get agreement from a majority in the House.
The immigration debate has given the American public a glimpse of what may lay ahead in 2008 GOP presidential politics.
Frist, R-Tenn., a potential presidential candidate in 2008, sought to establish more conservative credentials when he initially backed a bill limited to border security. At the same time, he has repeatedly called for a comprehensive bill adopting Bush's rhetoric and involved himself in the fitful negotiations over the past several days.
and,Globalization thus implies that sovereignty is not only becoming weaker in reality, but that it needs to become weaker.
Read his entire article here"States would be wise to weaken sovereignty in order to protect themselves, because they cannot insulate themselves from what goes on elsewhere."
