Immigration bill stalls amid calls for 'enforcement first'
The reform measure failed a key Senate vote Thursday. Its foes say the pressing need is to enforce existing laws – even if it makes life harder for illegal immigrants.
By Gail Russell Chaddock and Faye Bowers | Staff writers of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the June 29, 2007 edition
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Washington and Phoenix - The demise of the Senate immigration-reform bill on Thursday was, on the face of it, a matter of simple math: too few senators willing to move the controversial legislation to a final vote.
But the bill's bitter end has a deeper meaning. What nixed it was in large part a vocal, frustrated contingent of Americans with a vision for how US immigration reform should look – and this compromise legislation was not it.
"I don't think the message can be any clearer. The American people want us to start with enforcement at the border and at the workplace," said Sen. David Vitter (R) of Louisiana.
The bill's failure, 46 to 53, came despite the fact that two cabinet secretaries lobbied senators at the door as they prepared to vote on President Bush's top domestic priority. Fifteen Democrats and an Independent joined 37 Republicans to derail the bill.
"Enforcement first," or even "enforcement only," is how opponents of the Senate bill describe their alternative to immigration reform. That is, enforce the laws already on the books, and life in the US will become uncomfortable enough that many of the 12 million illegal immigrants now here will leave of their own volition. Beef up the border, and fewer will make it into the US in the first place.
"What we'd like to see is [government officials] enforce the laws that currently exist, which they have never done," says Ira Mehlman of The Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR) in Washington. "Most Americans fundamentally find objectionable that to even consider enforcing our laws we have to first make a deal with the people who break the laws."
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