Senate Delivers Fatal Blow to Immigration Bill
WASHINGTON – The hard-pressed immigration bill which sought to repair a broken system suffered a fatal blow Thursday rendering it dead to Congress, yet is predicted to live on as a key issue during the presidential race.
Fierce opposition to the bill from conservative Republicans who called the legislation amnesty has derailed the legislation for the time being. The emotionally-charged immigration problem involving millions of illegal immigrants in the United States and many more waiting to enter the country will remain as it is until most likely after a new president is elected in 2008.
"Everyone knows that our immigration laws are broken," Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said, according to CNN. "And a country loses some of its greatness when it can't fix a problem that everyone knows is broken. And that's what happened today."
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The White House worked with a bipartisan group of senators for months to develop the immigration bill which was proclaimed to be a "grand bargain" between the two parties. It was hoped that the compromises in the bill such as a plan to legalize 12 million illegal immigrants balanced by tougher border security would be able to appease both sides.
However, Republicans still denounced the bill as amnesty.
"The end result was a blanket that was too small to cover everyone," said Tamar Jacoby, an analyst at the conservative Manhattan Institute and a strong supporter, according to The Associated Press. "By its nature, because it was a compromise, it was hard to muster intense support. But the opposition was very intense."
The plan fell 14 votes short of the 60 needed to limit debate and move towards final passage of the legislation. In the 46-53 vote, three-quarters of the Senate's Republicans voted to kill the bill.
Immigration reform has been a central domestic issue for Bush for years. When the bill was first derailed earlier this month, the president took on the bill personally and made a rare appearance at the Capitol to rally fellow Republican senators to give the it another chance. Bush also sent two of his top aides to lobby for hours on Capitol Hill over a period of months to help push through the deal.
"Legal immigration is one of the top concerns of the American people and Congress' failure to act on it is a disappointment," a grim faced Bush said, according to AP. "A lot of us worked hard to see if we couldn't find common ground. It didn't work."
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, prominent immigration reform supporter Roman Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony said the current system "will continue to permit the exploitation of workers, the separation of families, and will handicap efforts to secure our nation's borders," according to Reuters.
More churches and Christian leaders have recently become more vocal in their support of a comprehensive immigration reform bill that would treat illegal immigrants humanely based on how the Bible teaches believers to treat strangers.
Metropolitan churches across the nation have even offered their buildings as sanctuary to shield illegal immigrants from law enforcement officers, while the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference representing 15 million Hispanic evangelicals urged believers to pray for the immigration legislation last Sunday.
"Immigration Reform is not just a political or moral issue, it is above all a spiritual issue," stated Dr. Jesse Miranda, president of the Advisory Board for the Hispanic NAE.
Some Christian leaders, however, opposed the bill, concerned that the legislation would open the floodgates for millions to come to America among other issues. The conservative think tank Heritage Foundation in an analysis of the bill estimated that its passage would mean at least 66 million legal immigrants coming to America in the next 20 years.
"No culture, no matter how open to diversity, can absorb that kind of population and societal shift in such a short period of time," wrote Dr. Tony Beam, director of the Christian Worldview Center at North Greenville University, in a recent column in The Christian Post.
Beam pointed to "God's Word" saying that it calls for a balance between caring for the "stranger" in the land and the stranger's responsibility to keep the law of the land.
After the bill's defeat, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a strong opponent of the bill, reassured that there would be "no permanent hard feelings over this among the people who wanted to pass a bill they thought would help America."
A key architect of the bill, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), however, said although the bill's defeat is a disappointment, he reassured Americans that, "We will be back. This issue is not going away," according to AP.
