DREAM Act dies in Senate

The weeks of rallies, hunger strikes and sit-ins and the thousands of phone calls placed to Senate offices didn’t pay off for immigration activists.

The decade-old DREAM Act once again failed to break a filibuster in the Senate on Saturday morning, effectively killing the bill this year and shutting the door on what perhaps was the last chance for pro-immigration reform legislation until at least the 2012 election.

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Senate Democrats came up five votes short of the 60 needed to advance the House-passed bill, which would provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants brought to the country as children if they attend college or join the military for two years.

The 55-41 vote was mostly along party lines, though a handful of Democrats — perhaps fearful of their 2012 election outlook — also voted against the DREAM Act.

This latest vote really didn't ever have a chance in the current political climate, which has moved decidedly against liberalizing immigration laws in recent years. Nonetheless, as droves of disappointed activists left the Senate galleries after the vote, several were crying – a sign of how emotionally charged the issue had become.

“I’ve known the names of most people and how they would vote for a long, long time,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the chief sponsor of the bill. “We’ve been working on the fringes to try to get the five. We’d hope for a few more on our side of the aisle and a few more on their side of the aisle, but we didn’t achieve it today.”

The DREAM Act would have passed if Democrats had shown unity on the measure.

But five Democrats voted against the legislation: Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and both Montana Democrats, Jon Tester and Max Baucus. West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin announced his opposition to the DREAM Act Saturday in a statement Saturday but missed the vote.

The DREAM Act’s defeat was a resounding victory for conservatives who have denounced the bill as a mass amnesty plan. But it was a blow for top Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama, who enlisted a half dozen Cabinet secretaries to lobby undecided lawmakers and embark on a media blitz highlighting that the bill would send more people to college, boost military recruitment and help the economy.

“This bill is a law that at its fundamental core is a reward for illegal activity,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) on the floor an hour before the vote. “It’s the third time we’ve tried to schedule a vote on it during this lame-duck session; it’s the fifth version of this legislation that has been introduced in the past five months.”

After years of Congress failing to deal with the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants, Hispanic leaders and immigration activists expressed frustration at the vote, vowing to target senators in 2012 and future elections.

For the lawmakers who voted against the bill, “it will be a defining vote in their career,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice, an immigrant advocacy group which has been fighting for the DREAM Act.