Senate Deals Major Blow to Immigration Bill

King George, and his co-conspirators, are failing in shoving an unpopular immigration bill down the throats of the American people:

A White House-backed bill to revamp immigration laws stalled in the Senate on Thursday, handing President George W. Bush a major legislative setback.

The sharply divided Senate refused to limit debate on the fragile compromise hammered out by a bipartisan group of senators and the White House. The vote was 45-50, 15 short of the 60 votes needed to advance significant legislation in the 100-member body toward a final vote.

[...]The bill, which has drawn fire from both the right and the left, ties tough border security and workplace enforcement measures to a temporary worker program and a plan to legalize most of the 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. It also would create a new merit-based system for future immigration.

Opposition to the legislation comes from many political camps:

While most Senate Democrats appeared to back the bill, several liberal members said it did too little to keep immigrant families together and protect jobs for U.S.-born workers.

The split in the Republican Party was more obvious. The issue pitted social conservatives, who insisted that illegal immigrants not be granted "amnesty" for entering the country unlawfully, against business groups hungry for willing workers in hotels, restaurants, construction sites and other comparatively low-wage, low-skilled workplaces.

[...]Top U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbyist R. Bruce Josten told The Associated Press this week that the immigration issue is "divisive in the Republican base, it's divisive in the Democratic base, it's divisive in the business community. It splits organized labor, it splits the immigration community."