Sherman’s News and Editorials

Despite the fact that top lawmakers tried to ramrod this bill through even though rouphly eighty percent of Americans were against it according to polls, it nontheless has failed, for now. Congress will reconvene on this later, according to reports.

According to Yahoo News and the Associated Press, The bill’s Senate supporters fell fourteen votes short of the sixty required to limit debate and pave the way for final passage of the legislation, which many critics have panned as basically offering amnesty to illegal immigrants. The vote was 46 to 53 in favor of limiting the debate.

Certain senators in both parties said the issue is so volatile that Congress is not likely to revisit it this fall or next year, when the presidential election will increasingly dominate American politics.

The commander in Chief appeared glum as he spoke, according to the story. His negotiators had expressed optimism the vote would go their way — or, at least be a little bit closer than it turned out to be.

“Congress really needs to prove to the American people that it can come together on hard issues,” Bush said. He turned attention to other his other goals in Congress this year, including energy, health care and balanced-budget initiatives.

Last year a similar immigration effort was defeated by the Congress, and the House has not bothered with an immigration bill this year, awaiting Senate action.

The vote was a defeat for a bipartisan group of lawmakers 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 US.

It was a victory for Republican conservatives who severely criticized the bill’s provisions that would have established pathways to lawful status for many of the estimated twelve million illegal immigrants. They were aided by talk radio and Television hosts who repeatedly verbally assaulted the bill and urged listeners to flood Congress with phone calls, faxes and electronic-mails.Voting to allow the bill to proceed by ending debate were 33 Democrats, 12 Republicans and independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. Voting to block the bill by not limiting debate were 37 Republicans, 15 Democrats and independent Bernard Sanders, Vt. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., did not vote.The bill would have toughened border security and also instituted a newer method 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.

Bush, making a last-ditch bid to salvage the bill, called senators early Thursday morning to urge their support. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez approached senators as they entered and left the chamber shortly before the vote.But conservatives from Bush’s own party led the opposition. They repeatedly said the government must secure the borders before allowing millions of illegal aliens a path to legal status.Sen. Elizabeth H. Dole, R-N.C., said many citizens simply “do not have confidence” that borders, particularly in the south, will be substantially tightened. “It’s not just promises but proof that the American people want,” Dole said.Many radio personalities assaulted the bill. Sean Hannity was very outspoken against it.On the Rush Limbaugh show it was reported that border agents had their hands tied and that the illegals had more rights than them. One caller on another conservative radio program and said “I am very upset that they are trying to ram this bill through and are not securing the border. You get on an airplane to go anywhere and you are treated like a criminal. 90 year old women have to strip and are prodded just to travel to see their relatives for Christmas. Yet millions of illegals literally pour across our border each year, about twenty percent of whom have a criminal record, and some have bodygaurds and are leaving korans along the side of the desert trails into the country. Meanwhile ordinary tax paying citizens are treated like common criminals.”