Nonsense. This was a terrible bill, and almost anyone who'd taken for what it was - and not some wish for what it could be - could see the handwriting on the wall. I think Democrats made the calculation that the circular firing squad Republicans lined up to shoot each other (and the President) over the immigration issue was enough payoff and that the bill's failure wouldn't be pinned on them. It won't be; but the Republican disarray masks significant divides within the Democratic party (take note of the 12 Democrats who defied Reid - and note, for instance, that Claire McCaskill was one of them). If we plan to be serious about addressing the issue of immigration, then we need to be serious, and not promote weak bills with sops to all sides that please no one. The approach needs to be different, the attempts at building a coalition need to be different, and the hopes of what can be accomplished - which I think starts by improving immigration process at USCIS (INS), rather than buying into the guest workers/fences nonsense - need to be reslized. Otherwise, all that's happened is kicking a can full of hornets down the road. Democrats will not be so lucky next time they try to pick it up.

Weboy, tell your "terrible bill" nonsense to the 12 to 20 million people in this country who face every day with the prospect of being deported, splitting up their family, ruining their careers, depleting their finances. Tell that to the 12 to 20 million people who don't have to protest peacefully for their right to live here, but they do. Tell that to the American-born Latinos, the American-born Irish, the American-born Southeast Asians who have family, friends, co-workers, lovers who could one day up and disappear.

I'm sorry, but this bill put those 12 to 20 million people on a path to fulfilling their American dream, and by just hoping that someday a better bill might come in another Congress is another year, two years, four years, eight years, of people living in the shadows, fraught with fear of the immigration patrol.

The fact that this "terrible" bill could have alleviated that problem and didn't pass is just a damn, damn shame.

...but the point is this - yes, terrible - bill wouldn't have solved that problem; it would have put in place an unwieldy, expensive, punitive structure that almost everyone acknowledged would probably not bring millions out of those "shadows". Moreover, those who did put themselves into the immigration process via Z-visas would be at the back of a "line" where legal immigrants still struggle to get processed in a timely fashion - if waits of up to 15 years can be called timely. And that's not even beginning to examine the failures of USCIS to manage the visa categories currently in place or its failure to track visitor and student visas. Our immigration system is extremely broken; almost no one denies that. The question is whether this bill was the vehicle for fixing it in a sensible way, or, again as almost everyone concluded, was a deeply flawed, problematic piece of legislation that would likely make many things worse. I'm not trying to be cavalier about the suffering and challenges facing millions of undocumented workers, or the pressures they put on our economy and the social fabric generally; but reforming immigration policy, really, isn't just about them. It's about creating reasonable, workable standards that make sense and an work. And if Democrats - the people who make government work - can't get it together to do better on immigration reform, then we really are in a bad way. I'll say it again: this was a terrible bill, and we are better off for it having failed.

The bill "wouldn't have solved that problem," you say. I disagree: The illegal immigrants here could apply within days of the bill's enactment for probationary status. Then, even though the system and the process may be screwy (and long and expensive), the point is: They're in the process. Once they're in the process, they can't be just simply deported on a whim of their local immigration enforcement.

So, yes, the bill has problems. But the point is: A good percentage of illegal immigrants would be put into the system. And having four million undocumented instead of 12 million -- yes, it's problematic, but it's not "terrible." Terrible is the system we've got.

And to say that the immigration legislation would have made things worse, I recommend today's article in the Times about New Haven as a good example that this legislation could not be worse.

There is no doubt that this was a terrible bill. The legalization program was terribly flawed. Not only was it too punitive and expensive for a sizeable portion of the current undocumented population to take advantage of, but it would also have prevented a sizeable portion of current undocumented immigrants from becoming lawful permanent residents (because of the touchback and other pointlessly punitive provisions and the fact that they would have to pass through the points system to get their green card.)

On top of that the bill would do further damage to our immigration system with its indentured servant-- I mean guest worker-- provisions and by effectively eliminating family-based immigration. In short, the bill would make all of the problems with our immigration system worse in the future.

That said, it is a tragedy that the millions of immigrants living in the shadows right now will have to continue living on the margins of society.

There was no real leadership on this bill, which managed to contain something unpalatable to all constituencies. We can only hope that there is better leadership in the future, but I doubt that without some kind of show of protest by immigrants themselves (like last year) that we will get anything.

You're right, SR -- the tragedy is the millions of immigrations who will have to continue living on the margins of society. But the more real tragedy is the lack of support this bill had from the left.

On the left, I think there was a willing ignorance of what this bill represented: a chance for most illegal immigrants to become legal. We all know the hateful attitudes a good portion of conservatives have for Latino immigrants. This bill was a big step forward in immigrant legalization, and it was supported by some conservatives, which was a huge step. And the fact that senators like mine, Barbara Boxer, gave up on the compromise because some parts of it (which could be fixable later in a more Democratic Senate) were unpleasant, the whole situation disappoints me greatly.

And I'm sure the situation is even worse for those who daily live in fear of immigration police.

Weboy, tell your "terrible bill" nonsense to the 12 to 20 million people in this country who face every day with the prospect of being deported, splitting up their family, ruining their careers, depleting their finances.

Are you saying that they didn't know this when they came?

Tell that to the 12 to 20 million people who don't have to protest peacefully for their right to live here, but they do.

What right is that? They have no right to live here. What a fool! That's what illegal means. They have no "right" to be here at all.

That bill had no chance. And frankly I'm glad. If people worried about inforcing the laws we have now, we wouldn't be in this mess.

and proof positive that they utterly lack capital in Congress. Bush's power over his party is insignificant now, and he is, as officially as can be, a lame duck.

Hmm, let's revisit this assertion in September, when all those Republican members of Congress stroke their chins in a worried fashion before signing off yet again on perpetual US occupation of Iraq.

More to the point, how much arm-twisting did the White House actually employ here? We always heard something about the rubber hose being brought out on other legislation the administration wanted (and always got). I suspect that while the creation of a legal permanent class of indentured servants was viewed as desirable by the White House, the status quo is still massive use of illegal immigrant labor with virtually no punitive action against the big business interests that employ them. And now a bunch of reactionary, Iraq-cheerleading, Constitution-shredding thugs can go back home and brag about how they voted against amnesty for wetbacks. And the middle and the left will hear that it's the fault of the Democrats that the good parts of the bill didn't pass. So I'm not really sure this is much of a loss for their team after all. Well, McCain's got some egg on his face, but the Bushes prefer Romney anyway.

Weboy, tell your "terrible bill" nonsense to the 12 to 20 million people in this country who face every day with the prospect of being deported, splitting up their family, ruining their careers, depleting their finances.

Are you saying that they didn't know this when they came?

Tell that to the 12 to 20 million people who don't have to protest peacefully for their right to live here, but they do.

What right is that? They have no right to live here. What a fool! That's what illegal means. They have no "right" to be here at all.

LMAO, media, you're in defense of people who broke the law. I'm in favor of granting them a broad amnesty for practical purposes, but your moral caterwauling strikes me as a bit dishonest. These people are in danger of being deported because they entered this country illegally, not because of anything Weboy, me, or anyone else who opposes this bill did.

And no, helping 20 million illegal immigrants isn't worth damning 50 million citizens to lower wages. It isn't worth turning hundreds of thousands more into near-slaves. It isn't worth creating a federal employment database. It isn't worth creating nationally mandated biometric employment permits either. This bill was full of a lot of very bad stuff, none of it worth helping the few illegal immigrants capable of paying for citizenship.

The bill was a bad bill on the merits. I don't think "better than nothing" is a good rationale to pass a bad bill. The guest worker program was stupid (and designed to creat illegal immigration basically), the "amnesty" provisions were extremely expensive (enough so that it was available only to the well off) and the enforcement was misallocated (to enforcement of borders rather than against employers). It was just BAD BAD BAD. there was no part of it that made sense or was rationally designed to accomplish a government objective.

I hope that we can pass a better one in two years, but the worry that we're not isn't worth passing a terrible one now.

Unsurprising that the comments are much more substantive than the official post here. This was a terrible example of legislative sausage-making, which would have increased immigration from Mexico, permanently depressed low-end wages, made us less attractive to higher-skilled immigration, and not least, allowed Mexico to continue delaying solving its problems as long as we serve as its giant safety valve. The real question isn't why GOPers supported it-- the Wall Street crowd would love to see the new minimum wage cut in practice by shadow workers-- but why the unions are letting the Dems get away with screwing them so badly for a new Latino constituency. The SEIU might benefit but so many of the others surely won't. And I really have to question whether it would have been worth it for the Dems-- getting a new, historically low-turnout base (Latinos) while driving a much higher-turnout one (Joe Lunchpail) into Republican arms (at least part of the Republican party). Bad law, bad policy, bad enforcement, bad politics-- I don't understand who ever thought this bill made sense, even on the gooshiest humanitarian grounds.

Was there any indication that Bush was doing more than giving lip service in support of this bill?

If he was working the phones, twisting arms, and all the other stuff a President does to persuade Congresscritters to vote for a bill he really cares about, I didn't hear any reports of it.

That doesn't mean it didn't happen, but is there any evidence it did?

Because if it didn't, then Bush's support of this bill was essentially a nonfactor, and there's no reason why we can't get a better immigration bill in 2-3 years, because a Dem President will lean on Congress to vote for a better bill than this, and GOP opposition will continue to solidify a Dem-Hispanic alliance that will make the GOP a minority party for at least a couple of decades.

'Was there any indication that Bush was doing more than giving lip service in support of this bill?"

I think he generally outsourced the arm-twisting to Tom DeLay.

Media Glutton: FYI, an old saying from my days as a consular officer in the Foreign Service: "To get deported from the US, you have to be poor AND stupid." I had some problems with the bill -- too generous, allowing anyone who got here by Jan. 1 to stay -- but think it was probably the closest thing to doable that's ever going to be put forward. But right-wing radio exploded, so down went the GOP. But I agree that Democrats and the bleeding-heart left need to re-think immigration. There are a lot of lefties, myself included, who worry about the economic effect on the US' own downtrodden when the kinds of jobs that used to be an entree to the middle class -- like construction -- become the purview of low-skilled immigrants (legal or illegal) instead. And some of us worry about the population of this country growing without end. Too many on the left are too willing to condemn anyone concerned over illegal immigration as anti-Hispanic racists when there are many legitimate reasons to be worried. And the Dems will pay a price if they continue to march onward toward amnesty for all without getting serious about enforcement as well. I'll go for both, but not the former without the latter.