For now, DREAM over

Pryor helps block alien-student bill in Senate

Illegal aliens Leslie Perez (left) and Grecia Mondragon, both students at the University of California, Los Angeles, watch televised coverage of Saturday’s immigration vote in the Senate.
Illegal aliens Leslie Perez (left) and Grecia Mondragon, both students at the University of California, Los Angeles, watch televised coverage of Saturday’s immigration vote in the Senate.

— Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas and four of his Democratic colleagues joined Republicans to block a measure allowing legal status for some younger illegal aliens, a new setback for advocates who have sought the immigration-law change for a decade.

The Senate’s 55-41 vote was short of the 60 required to take up the bill. Arkansas’ Sen. Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat, a co-sponsor of the legislation, voted in favor of taking up the bill.

The vote signals bleak prospects for the measure as well as any broader immigration overhaul after Republicans take control of the House and gain five Senate seats in January.

The House passed the measure earlier this month, 216-198, with supporters saying it would help the U.S. economy by adding educated,ambitious young people to the work force. Called the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors, or DREAM,Act, the legislation would allow people who were brought to the U.S. illegally before age 16 and who remain for at least five years to gain legal residency after going to college or serving in the military for at least two years. It would provide a route to legal status for an estimated 1 million to 2 million such illegal aliens.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., promised Hispanic groups and others favoring a comprehensive overhaul that he would advance the bill as a “down payment” to keep momentum in the debate over immigration. He and other backers said it would aid aliens who have been educated in the U.S. and could contribute to the economy.

“Millions of children who grew up as Americans will be able to get the education they need to contribute to our economy,” he said during earlier debate on the bill.

INTERACTIVE

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Pryor said public universities are limited in their enrollment.

“There’s a limited number of slots,” he said. Allowing illegal aliens to compete for those positions “would be unfair to the people who played by the rules,” he said.

Lincoln said the people who would have qualified for the bill’s benefits were brought to the country without choice.

“These are individuals who have demonstrated their dedication to serving this country and attained educational success,” she said, “and Americans stand to gain from their contributions.”

Republicans largely united against the legislation, with some arguing it provided amnesty for illegal aliens. Opponents said it would provide legal status to people beyond their college years and give a safe harbor to some aliens with criminal records.

“The first thing you do is you don’t reward it,” said Sen.Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee. “The second thing you want to do is end the massive illegality that’s occurring in this country.”

President Barack Obama said the vote was “incredibly disappointing” and vowed to continue seeking consensus on immigration.

“A minority of senators prevented the Senate from doing what most Americans understand is best for the country,” Obama said. “There was simply no reason not to pass this important legislation.”

Similar legislation failed in 2007, though it was supported by 12 Republican senators, including Orrin Hatch of Utah and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. The party has since opposed liberalizing immigration law amid a voter backlash against illegal aliens and security lapses on the U.S.-Mexico border.

In Saturday’s vote, three Republicans voted to let the debate go forward: Robert Bennett of Utah, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Richard Lugar of Indiana. Five Democrats joined 36 Republicans in voting to block the measure: Pryor, Max Baucus of Montana, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Jon Tester of Montana.

Not voting were Republican Sens. Hatch, Jim Bunning of Kentucky and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

Dozens of foreigners wearing graduation mortarboards watched from the Senate’s visitors gallery, disappointment on their faces, as the 55-41 vote was announced.

“This is a dark day in America,” said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, a spokesman for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles.“The Senate has ... thrown under the bus the lives and hard work of thousands and thousands of students who love this country like their own home, and, in fact, they have no other home.”

Hispanics - the fastest growing U.S. minority group, making up 15 percent of the population, according to Census figures - will be a deciding factor in a number of states in the 2012 presidential election, said Robert de Posada, president of Latinos for Reform, a political action committee that urged Hispanics not to vote in the Nov. 2 midterm elections.

“You cannot win a presidential election without a significant amount of the Hispanic vote,” said de Posada, a former director of Hispanic affairs at the Republican National Committee. The Republican Party must become more welcoming to Hispanics if it wants a shift in the ethnic group’s voting behavior, he said.

Congressional Democrats, too, have worked to forestall a backlash from groups backing a broad-based immigration overhaul by stressing their effort to move ahead with the narrower DREAM Act. The Obama administration in recent weeks stepped up lobbying for it, with Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano calling lawmakers to urge support.

Senate Democratic leaders said after the vote they won’t give up on the immigration issue in the next session of Congress. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said he is seeking bipartisan support for a broad measure that would wrap in the DREAM Act and hopes to introduce it in 2011.

“It will be tough” due tothe political volatility of the immigration issue, he said. Still, “immigration reform is hardly dead.”

Democrats in both chambers said they’ll try again in the next Congress, despite the increased GOP presence.

“The echo of this vote will be loud and long,” said Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, D-Ill., a key House sponsor of the bill. “We are at the tipping point that will define the political alignment of the Republican and Democratic parties with Latino voters for a generation.”

“This country has a history of opening its arms,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. “Today, it’s arms were closed, but we’re going to get there.”

The immigration debate has been shunted to the background since Obama took office in January 2009 and said an overhaul was a top priority.The issue was set aside as a drive to overhaul health care took precedence and dragged on longer than expected.

Senate Democrats in April drafted a proposal to boost border security before later providing a way for a portion of the estimated 11 million illegal aliens to become U.S. citizens.

The only significant immigration legislation to clear Congress in the past two years was a $600 million border-security law Obama signed in August. It included funding to hire 1,500 Border Patrol, Customs and other agents along the border with Mexico.

Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican who will become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, says that when Republicans take control of the House in January he will focus on border security and cracking down on companies that hire illegal aliens.

Information for this article was contributed from Washington by Laura Litvan and Traci McMillan of Bloomberg News; by Sofia Mannos of The Associated Press; and by Alex Daniels of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/19/2010

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