WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate delivered an apparently fatal blow on Thursday to President George W. Bush’s planned immigration overhaul and dashed the hopes of millions of immigrants seeking legal status.

In a crucial make or break vote that exposed deep lack of support among Bush’s own Republicans, the legislation fell 14 votes short of the 60 needed in the 100-member Senate to advance toward a final vote.

Supporters of the bill, which was the result of months of negotiations between a group of Republican and Democratic senators and the White House, were dismayed by the vote.

Rosa Rosales, the national president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said it was unlikely Congress would return to immigration reform before next year’s presidential election.

“No one benefits now, there is nothing to look forward ... it’s very disappointing,” Rosales told Reuters.

Bush has sought an overhaul of U.S. immigration laws for years and this bill may have been his last chance for a significant domestic legislative victory before leaving office at the end of his second term in January 2009.

Bush made clear he was moving on from immigration to other issues like balancing the federal budget. “A lot of us worked hard to see if we couldn’t find common ground (on immigration), it didn’t work,” Bush said in a stop at the Naval War College in Rhode Island.

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The president was unable to overcome fierce opposition from fellow Republicans who said it was an amnesty for an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the country and would do little to stem illegal immigration.

Even the promise of an additional $4.4 billion to pay for more border security and enforcement did not quell Republican opposition.

The bill failed to garner even a simple majority. Only 46 senators -- 33 Democrats, 12 Republicans and 1 independent -- voted to advance the bill. Some 15 Democrats joined 37 Republicans and 1 independent to block the legislation.

It was the second time in as many weeks the Senate tried to pass the legislation.

TOUGH TO REVIVE

Senate leaders have said it would be difficult if not impossible to revive the bill again before the November 2008 presidential election. Immigration has already become an issue in the election campaign.

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The bill tied tough border security and workplace enforcement measures to a plan to legalize illegal immigrants and create a temporary worker program sought by business groups. It also would have created a new merit-based system for future immigrants.

The bill was also opposed by some labor unions, who said its temporary worker program would have created an underclass of cheap laborers. Immigrant groups opposed measures in the bill that limited migration on the basis of family ties.

Republican opponents of the bill said Bush should give up on broad immigration reform and concentrate on keeping illegal immigrants out.

“The next step is to immediately push the president to take up his word and enforce security at the border,” said Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican who help lead the fight against the bill.

Supporters of the bill were crushed.

“We were looking to politicians for leadership on this issue, and there has been none and it’s deeply disappointing,” said Sheridan Bailey, the president of Ironco Enterprises in Phoenix and a co-founder of Arizona Employers for Immigration Reform.

“It’s like in Vietnam when they said ‘we had to destroy the village to save it,’ well here they are destroying the economy to save the U.S. border,” said Bailey, echoing the views of employers from eleven U.S. states, who have formed lobby groups to advocate for immigration reform.