Senate Fails to Pass Immigration Bill Cloture Vote

SAN FRANCISCO -- Immigrant rights groups, who came down on different sides of the immigration reform bill that failed today in the Senate, agree on one thing: things are going to get worse before they get better.

The Senate’s failure to move the immigration bill forward today effectively put off the possibility of immigration reform until 2009.

“Today the Senate voted for the status quo,” says Michele Waslin, director of immigration policy research at the National Council of La Raza in Washington, D.C. Except the status quo may have changed in the last few years, activists say, as raids, detentions and deportations have increased nationally, and more cities and states across the country enact anti-immigrant legislation.

Without immigration reform legislation on the table, Rich Stolz, immigration co-team leader at the Center for Community Change, expects the country will see more anti-immigrant ordinances passed by local governments. These ordinances, he says, are among the biggest threats to the civil rights of immigrants. “America will become a police state for anyone who looks or sounds like an immigrant,” warns CCC’s Fair Immigration Reform Movement in a statement today.