68-32 Vote Sends Bill to House, Where Odds Are Longer
By ASHLEY PARKER
The biggest overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws in a generation
passed the Senate on Thursday with strong bipartisan support, but a
similar bill faces significant opposition from conservatives in the
House.
- Video: Senator Rubio’s Speech on Immigration
Key Areas in Immigration Bill
- Immigration Measure Could Alter Hiring in the United States
Christopher Gregory/The New York Times
Senator Michael Bennet congratulated Senator Robert Menendez on Thursday after the Senate passed the immigration legislation.
Senate Passes Immigration Overhaul
Christopher Gregory/The New York Times
Senator Michael Bennet congratulated Senator Robert Menendez on Thursday after the Senate passed the immigration bill.
By ASHLEY PARKER
Published: June 27, 2013
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday approved the most significant
overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws in a generation with broad
bipartisan support, sending the bill to the Republican-controlled House,
where there is significant opposition from conservative members and
where the fight could extend into 2014.
Multimedia
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Bill to Expand U.S. Database to Verify Hires (June 27, 2013)
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Border Security Rule Costs Bill Support (June 27, 2013)
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Economix Blog: Immigration and Fiscal Policy (June 26, 2013)
Christopher Gregory/The New York Times
Senator Lindsey Graham appeared with other members of
the “Gang of Eight” after the Senate passed the overhaul.
But given the strong 68-to-32 vote,
with 14 Republicans voting in favor, the Democratic leadership and the
bipartisan group of eight senators who drafted the original bill seemed
determined to savor the moment. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
presided over the vote as senators announced their positions from their
desks, in a ceremonial procedure reserved for special occasions.
Leading up to the vote, many in the “Gang of Eight” that drafted the
framework of the legislation took to the Senate floor to give impassioned speeches,
including Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, who is one of his
party’s leading Hispanic voices. When Mr. Rubio finished, the other
senators in the bipartisan group surrounded him on the floor, patting
him on the back and offering words of encouragement. “Good job,” said
one. “I’m proud of you,” said another.
During the vote, Mr. Rubio buttoned his suit jacket as he stood and said
“aye.” Later, as Mr. Rubio walked around the Senate floor receiving
congratulations, he passed by the pages sitting on the steps just below
the podium and called out, “You picked a good day to be here.”
The Senate bill provides a 13-year path to citizenship for the 11
million unauthorized immigrants in the country, as well as tough border
security provisions that must be in place before the immigrants can gain
legal status.
Though overhauling the nation’s immigration system became a priority for
many Republicans after the 2012 presidential election, in which the
Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, was rejected by Hispanic voters,
immigration opponents have mounted last-ditch efforts to derail the
bill, which they say would offer amnesty without any real enforcement
measures.
As the bill heads to the House, Republican elites and their
well-financed pro-immigration groups are running up against opposition
from the chamber’s most conservative members. Speaker John A. Boehner
threw cold water on any hope that the House would vote on the Senate
plan, and he insisted that whatever immigration measure his chamber took
up would have to be supported by a majority of his Republican
conference.
“I issued a statement that I thought was pretty clear, but apparently
some haven’t gotten the message: The House is not going to take up and
vote on whatever the Senate passes,” he said Thursday morning. “We’re
going to do our own bill.”
The legislation — drafted largely behind closed doors by the bipartisan
group — brought together an unlikely coalition of Democrats and
Republicans, business groups and labor unions, farmworkers and growers,
and Latino, gay rights, and immigration advocates. Along the way, the
legislation was shaped and tweaked by a series of backroom deals and
negotiations that, in many ways, seemed to mirror its inception.
Even late Wednesday, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York
and an author of the bill, found himself on the phone with Gov. Chris
Christie of New Jersey, trying to shore up support. In a 30-minute phone
call, according to an aide, Mr. Schumer urged Mr. Christie to help
persuade Senator Jeffrey S. Chiesa, Republican of New Jersery — newly
appointed by Mr. Christie — to vote for the bill. (Mr. Chiesa was one of
14 Republicans who voted “yes” on Thursday afternoon to end debate).
The first big deal, however, came early on, at the end of March, when
the nation’s top labor and business groups reached an agreement on a
guest worker program for low-skilled immigrants. Disagreements between
the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the nation’s main
federation of labor unions, had helped doom a 2007 attempt at a similar
overhaul, but the two groups came together to create a program that will
expand and shrink based on economic indicators — like the unemployment
and job openings figures — and offer a maximum of 200,000 guest visas
annually.
The group of senators who wrote the legislation had originally hoped it
would receive overwhelming bipartisan support — as many as 70 votes,
some senators suggested — to help propel it through the House, and when
the bill moved to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the group took pains
to win bipartisan support there, too.
In an effort led by Mr. Schumer, the group wooed Senator Orrin Hatch,
Republican of Utah, addressing his concerns about visas for skilled
foreign workers who could fill jobs in the high-tech industry.
Ultimately, the panel agreed to provisions by Mr. Hatch that raise the
annual minimum number of visas for high-skilled foreign workers and
create a market-based mechanism to ensure that companies in the United
States can bring in qualified foreign workers for jobs that cannot be
filled by Americans.
On the final night of consideration by the panel, in emotional and
moving testimony, both Democratic and Republican senators argued against
taking up a measure that would have allowed United States citizens to
apply for permanent resident status, known as a green card, on behalf of
their same-sex partners. Though Democrats supported the measure,
Republicans said such a provision would have doomed the overall bill,
and the debate largely became moot on Wednesday, when the Supreme Court
ruled that married same-sex couples were entitled to federal benefits.
The bill passed through the committee, in a process that stretched over
five days and included the consideration of more than 300 amendments, on
a strong 13-to-5 bipartisan vote, with Mr. Hatch, as well as Senators
Jeff Flake of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both
Republicans and members of the bipartisan group, supporting the bill.
(In a recent op-ed article, Mr. Hatch also declared his support for the
final legislation).
The bill’s largest, and perhaps most critical, change came in the form
of a border security package that promised to substantially bolster
security along the nation’s southern border. The proposal, by Senators
Bob Corker of Tennessee and John Hoeven of North Dakota, both
Republicans, would devote roughly $40 billion over the next decade to
border enforcement measures, including adding 20,000 new Border Patrol
agents and 700 miles of fencing along the southern border.
The amendment, which passed Wednesday with broad bipartisan support,
helped bring along more than a dozen reluctant Republicans, who were
hesitant to support the overall bill without a clear plan to secure the
southern border, in order to ward off a future wave of illegal
immigration.
“I’m proud to vote for this, and I hope it continues to improve as it
moves along, and hopefully we’ll put this issue behind us,” Mr. Corker
said.
Still, not everyone was satisfied with the final product. Senator Rob
Portman, Republican of Ohio, had hoped to offer an amendment that would
have strengthened the provisions in the bill regarding E-Verify, the
electronic employment verification system, by requiring employers to
comply sooner and tightening antifraud measures through a
photograph-matching component. Though Mr. Portman was given the option
to include his provision in the Corker-Hoeven plan, he wanted a separate
vote on his E-Verify proposal, arguing that the issue merited its own
consideration, and that doing so would further show House Republicans
that the Senate was making a good-faith effort to offer tough
enforcement measures.
The Senate leadership was ultimately unable to reach an agreement to
bring up Mr. Portman’s measure, along with other amendments on both
sides, and Mr. Portman — whose vote Democratic senators were desperately
hoping to bring on board — refused to support the bill.
“I can’t look my constituents in the eye and say, ‘This bill will work,’
unless I believe the enforcement is strong,” Mr. Portman said. “I spoke
to a bunch of House members last night on this very topic, and they
want to know there’s going to be enforcement as part of the
legalization.”
The immigration effort in the Senate benefited from a series of external
factors that helped draw public attention away from the bill as it made
its way from a set of principles to a fully formed agreement to a
1,000-plus-page bill with amendments attached. The Boston Marathon
bombings occurred on the eve of the bipartisan group’s planned rollout
of the bill, and shortly afterward came controversies involving the
Internal Revenue Service and the National Security Agency. Even this
week, as the bill headed to final passage, major Supreme Court rulings
shared the spotlight.
Now, however, all eyes are turned to the House. At a Congressional
softball game Wednesday night, Mr. Schumer ran into Representative Nancy
Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader. Mr. Schumer, an aide
recalled, told Ms. Pelosi that he thought the bipartisan group would be
able to deliver 68 votes for the bill in the Senate — and that he wanted
to talk about how to use that momentum to move forward in the House.
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