DREAM Act Stalls In Senate

The DREAM Act failed on a motion to proceed on a mostly partisan vote 55 to 41 in the Senate on Saturday.  Nearly all of the Senate GOP voted against the DREAM Act. Only 3 crossed over to vote for this bipartisan legislation.

With the White Hosue and Immigration advocates in feverish negotiations right until the hour of the vote, there was some question as too whether or not Senate GOP would vote at all on the legislation.

Senators Bennett of Utah, Lugar of Indiana, and Murkowski of Alaska all crossed party lines and voted on this legislation. These three brave Republicans should receive some measure of thanks for doing so. A full break out of the Senate vote can be seen over at the Washington Post HERE

Julia Preston of the New York Times has a great analysis of what went on Saturday HERE:

The vote by the Senate on Saturday to block a bill to grant legal status to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant students was a painful setback to an emerging movement of immigrants...

Preston does a great job of also contextualizing how this vote plays out politically:

The result, although not unexpected, was still a rebuff to President Obama by newly empowered Republicans in Congress on an issue he has called one of his priorities. Supporters believed that the bill — tailored to benefit only immigrants who were brought here illegally when they were children and hoped to attend college or enlist in the military — was the easiest piece to pass out of a larger overhaul of immigration laws that Mr. Obama supports.

The DREAM Act was considered the easiest piece of comprehensive immigration reform because it is legislation that Republicans have long supported. Some long term Republican supporters turned their backs on the legislation this past weekend. Below are some of the biggest offenders:

Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT): “"With regard to the DREAM Act, a lot of these kids are brought in as infants. They don't even know that they're not citizens until they graduate from high school," Hatch said. "If they've lived good lives, if they've done good things, why would we penalize them and not let them at least go to school?" [KSL Radio, 7/7/10]

Senator Hutchison (R-TX): “This is such an important piece of legislation and I do think this is isolated from the entire immigration issue because there ... are young people who have been brought to this country as minors, not of their own doing, who have gone to American high schools, graduated, and who want to go to American colleges.” [San Antonio Express News, 12/2/10]

Even some GOP talking heads were left shaking their heads on how Senate Republicans could block such common sense legislation. Think Progress did a great round up here:

NEWARK, NJ MAYOR CORY BOOKER: To tell people who’ve been through high school, high school presidents going on to college some of the best brains who have no relation to their home country. This is crazy. It’s hurting America.

GOP STRATEGIST MARK MCKINNON: The Republican Party has got to recognize Hispanics are the huge growing demographic in this country. … We gotta send the right signal to Hispanics in this country in addition to the fact that it’s the right policy.

FOX NEWS’ JUAN WILLIAMS: The one thing that I regret…is the defeat of the DREAM Act for the immigrants and the immigrant kids. I just think, again, Republicans play politics with real lives, real people, real aspirations and they leave the immigration issue on the table when that’s the real business of the American people.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has indicated that he will be looking to bring immigration reform legislation up in the next congress. More on this as it develops.

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