U.S. Senate Approves Landmark Immigration Reform Bill

By Ruben Hernandez

 The United States Senate passed an historic immigration reform bill Thursday that would improve border security and provide an opportunity for citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living and working in this country.  If the legislation is eventually passed into law, it has the potential to become the most important legislative achievement of the second term of President Barack Obama, who backs reform.

The senators voted 68 to 32 to pass the reform bill, a measure put together by a bipartisan “Gang of Eight” senators that included Sen. John McCain and Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona. In a bipartisan move, 14 Republicans joined the 68 Democrats to approve the bill.

 McCain gave a strong speech to urge his fellow Republicans to vote for the bill. “They wanted to live the American Dream – it’s what they gave their lives for,” he said on the Senate floor. “Shouldn’t we give them the same chance that we’ve given generations who have come to this country, wave after wave of Irish and Jews and Poles? Isn’t it in us to bring 11 million people out of the shadows who are now being exploited?”

 “I am in favor of this reform. Because I believe in not only immigrants, but because I believe even more in the United States,” said Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the most prominent Republican in the Group of 8, and a potential presidential candidate in 2016.

The Republicans who voted for the legislation did so only when a provision to beef up border security was added this week. The bill calls for $38 billion for border security, would double the number of Border Security agents to about 40,000, complete 350 miles of fence along the 1,120 miles of U.S.-Mexico border, and buy drones, radars, and other technological surveillance equipment to detect undocumented border crossings.

Now the bill moves to the House of Representatives, where it may face stiffer opposition from the majority of Republicans in that chamber of Congress.

House Speaker John Boehner renewed his concern about the legislation and issued a sharp reminder about the resistance the measure faces in the House. Boehner (R-Ohio) said that he intends for the House to pursue its own immigration reform approach, rather than taking up the Senate bill.

“The House is not going to take up and vote on whatever the Senate passes,” Boehner told reporters at a press conference. “For any legislation, including a conference report, to pass the House, it’s going to have to be a bill that has the support of a majority of our members.”

The bill carries with it political danger if the bill should die in the House. The Republican Party is still stinging from its defeats in the presidential election and other political offices because of harsh opposition to giving undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship, when they refer to negatively as “amnesty.” Should the Republicans be blamed for killing immigration reform, they may suffer even more of a voter backlash in the 2016 presidential election year.

Many Arizonans reacted to the bill passage.

Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton released the following statement on the U.S. Senate’s passage of immigration reform:

“Thank you to our Arizona Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake for working hard in a bipartisan way toward comprehensive immigration reform. Along with the Gang of Eight they fought for better border security and a pathway to citizenship that will allow families to stay together and our economy to grow. But we must keep the momentum going — our representatives in the House have a lot of bipartisan work to do, and Phoenix needs them to act. No region in the country will benefit more economically from passage of comprehensive immigration reform and the Dream Act than ours.”

 Assistant House Minority Leader Ruben Gallego, D-Phoenix, made the following statement about the immigration reform legislation approved by the U.S. Senate.

 “The immigration bill that the U.S. Senate passed today was the result of bipartisan compromise. It is not a perfect bill, but it does reflect common-sense reform that will help ensure that everyone is playing by the same rules and contributing their fair share. The bill includes a plan for border security and a way to earn citizenship by meeting stringent requirements. It would also modernize the legal immigration system.”

 “The bill now moves to the U.S. House of Representatives where it will face an uphill battle. Arizonans will benefit economically from common-sense immigration reform. We must remain involved and continue to let our elected representatives in Washington D.C. know that they should prioritize fixing our broken immigration system.”

 Reyna Polanco, a member of the Arizona DREAM Act Coalition of undocumented youth, referred to the great effort that organization conducted to get Arizonans to contact their senators to support the measure. She wrote on Facebook in Spanish: “Thank God and the strength of our communities have been vital these last 24 hours with calls, faxes, Twitters, personally visiting the offices of senators, finally, have passed the proposed comprehensive immigration reform…now we redouble our efforts to the lower chamber. .. just take a breather then the struggle continues…”

Most Hispanic Congress members hailed the passage of the bill in the Senate.

“It’s up to the House of Representatives now,” said Congressman Xavier Becerra  of California, and chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.  “The Senate has done its job and passed a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill that will secure our borders, protect our workers, require employers to comply with common sense laws, unite families and offer hardworking immigrants an earned pathway to become taxpaying American citizens. Immigration reform also will boost our economic recovery and reduce the federal deficit by nearly $200 billion over the next decade. It’s time for real leadership in the House. We must complement the work done by Democratic and Republican Senators. We must debate and pass bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform. If we work together – not as Republicans and Democrats but as colleagues and duly elected representatives of the American people – we’ll get the job done.”