The Shamnesty coalition failed to get the vote to sustain cloture on the Illegal Alien Amnesty Bill.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate drove a stake Thursday through President Bush’s plan to legalize millions of unlawful immigrants, likely postponing major action on immigration until after the 2008 elections.
The bill’s supporters fell 14 votes short of the 60 needed to limit debate and clear the way for final passage of the legislation, which critics assailed as offering amnesty to illegal immigrants. The vote was 46 to 53 in favor of limiting the debate.
Senators in both parties said the issue is so volatile that Congress is highly unlikely to revisit it this fall or next year, when the presidential election will increasingly dominate American politics.
A similar effort collapsed in the Congress last year, and the House has not bothered with an immigration bill this year, awaiting Senate action.
The vote was a stinging setback for Bush, who advocated the bill as an imperfect but necessary fix of current immigration practices in which many illegal immigrants use forged documents or lapsed visas to live and work in the United States.
It was a victory for Republican conservatives who strongly criticized the bill’s provisions that would have established pathways to lawful status for many of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. They were aided by talk radio and TV hosts who repeatedly attacked the bill and urged listeners to flood Congress with calls, faxes and e-mails.
The bill would have toughened border security and instituted a new system for weeding out illegal immigrants from workplaces. It would have created a new guest worker program and allowed millions of illegal immigrants to obtain legal status if they briefly returned home.
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Michelle Malkin has more information on this than anyone in the blogosphere.
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June 28th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
[...] A 2nd Time, AMNESTY IS DEAD!!! | Political Vindication, Amnesty Bill Killed « Axis of Right, Vote For Cloture On Immigration Bill : The Nays Have It! | Stuck On Stupid, Dinocrat » Blog Archive » It wasn’t just the GOP, PAXALLES, Pierre [...]
June 29th, 2007 at 12:18 am
Dubya’s amnesty plan collapses…
Finally, president Dubya’s had his whole amnesty bill rejected in the Senate….