Border-security-only bill falls victim to collapse of comprehensive immigration bill

The border-security-only bill was another victim of the collapse Friday of the more comprehensive immigration bill. On Thursday night Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tennessee) and Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) had the votes to pass a compromise immigration bill sponsored y Senators Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska) and Mel Martinez (R-Florida). There was one point, however, over which the Democrats and Republicans could agree: How many amendments to the bill by the bill’s opponents should be allowed to come for a vote on the floor.”

The Democrats wanted Frist to limit the number of amendments by the bill’s opponents which would be allowed to come to a vote. The Democrats had two reasons for this: The official reason was their justified fear that some of the amendments may pass, weakening the bill generally, and, even more specifically, weakening it ahead of the conference negotiations with the House, where a harsher and more punitive immigration bill passed last month. Democrats believed that unless the Senate bill sent to conference was very strong, it would have many punitive measures from the House bill added to it by Representative James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin), who would likely have headed the House delegation in conference. The Democrats’ unstated reason was the fact that it is good for them politically not to have a moderate Senate bill ahead of the November 2006 mid-term election. Former California governor Pete Wilson campaigned on an anti-immigration plank for the 1996 Republican presidential nomination. He did not win the nomination, but his anti-immigration rhetoric lost California for the Republican on the national level for a generation. Similarly, the harsh House immigration bill is roiling the Hispanic community — the fastest growing group in the United States — and this suits the Democrats just fine, as this anger will blunt, and then reverse, whatever gains Republicans made among Hispanics under President Bush.”

For Frist, however, the opposite calculation was the case. The House bill reflects much more closely the sentiments of socially conservative Republicans. Frist’s association with the more moderate Senate bill would have hurt him among these loyal Republican voters in any event, and one way to assuage some of this anger would have been to allow poison-pill amendments from bill opponents to come to the floor. Frist is running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, and he cannot afford to alienate the party’s conservative base.”

When it became clear that the comprehensive bill would be pulled because Frist and Reid could not agree on the number of amendments which would be allowed to come to the floor, some senators tried to put forth for a vote a border-security-only bill, but it failed, too. All but two Democrats and twenty Republicans voted against considering the border security-only bill, the last of three immigration votes in recent days. The border-security proposals rejected by the Senate would have added 15,000 new Border Patrol agents, authorized unmanned aerial vehicles and cameras to watch the border, and built miles of strategically placed fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. The bill would have created tough new penalties for human smugglers and expedited removal of terrorists and gang members from the United States. The border security-only measure died Friday on a 36-62 vote, 24 “ayes” short of the 60 required.