It didn't fail. In fact, many of the Senator supporting the bill voted against cloture -- ending debate and the considiration of changes to the bill -- which is what the vote was.
What happens now is that the Senate takes a pause from debating the bill in order to tend to its other businesses, and than return to it either sometime later this month or in early July.
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What happened?
Only 23% of Americans supported the bill. They did not want it as written. The "populace" spoke, loud and clear. When Congress broke for the Memorial Day recess, their constituents clobbered them back home. I know I did. My Senators and Reps got mail and phone calls. And I understand that the phone lines to the every Senator's office this week were clogged with angry calls, from some of the interviews with staff I heard..
"Amnesty" was nothing more than legalizing 12,000,000 felons, rewarding them for breaking the law with a pat on the head and a government nipple.
If you actually READ the SPECIFIC tenants of the bill, you'd see it was totally unworkable. Paying a fine? Going back home before re-entry? Actually telling the authorities you were in country? C'mon...that is beyond belief. And the bill was FULL of thay type of baloney.
I would suggest that folks should read the 1986 Immigration Bill and tell me why that one was never enforced. Why a new bill? I want to know what was wrong with THAT one. Why not just a Congressional Resolution to fund the enforcement of the old one?
That Immigration Bill would be like the DR passing an Anti-Corruption Bill, requiring voluntary compliance, and praising it as a great step forward..
That bill was a pig in a poke, and did NOT represent the wishes of the American people who want secure borders FIRST. It was a pure exercise in special interest politics. The Republicans wanted continued cheap labor. The Democrats want a large, new voting constituency. But the American people want security and fairness for those who want to come to the US LEGALLY.
Personally, it really pi$$ed me off. Alida applied for US residency in 1999. She got approved in 2005. She went on the SDQ waiting list in May 2006. She has maybe less than a year left. It will have taken her 8 years to go through the process LEGALLY. To reward folks who sneak across the border by giving them Amnesty is a slap in the face of all those folks who have done the Right Thing, and have gone through the process LEGALLY.
The US gov't very rarely prosecutes business owners for hiring illegal aliens as employees.