'The strong bipartisan vote we took is going to send a message,' Chuck Schumer said. | REUTERS Senate passes immigration bill

The Senate on Thursday passed the most monumental overhaul of U.S. immigration laws in a generation, which would clear the way for millions of undocumented residents to have a chance at citizenship, attract workers from all over the world and devote unprecedented resources for security along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The vote was 68-32. Fourteen Republicans crossed the aisle to vote with all Democrats in favor. Thursday’s vote now puts the onus of immigration reform on the Republican-led House, where leaders have been resistant to the Senate legislation.


“The strong bipartisan vote we took is going to send a message across the country, it’s going to send a message to the other end of the Capitol as well,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the leader of the so-called Gang of Eight. “The bill has generated a level of support that we believe will be impossible for the House to ignore.

( Also on POLITICO: Republicans who voted for the bill)

The bill was a product of not only weeks of floor debate and committee rewrites, but months of private negotiations by the Gang of Eight — the group of four Democrats and four Republicans — to produce legislation that would give the Senate a shot at passing immigration reform, something it was unable to do just six years ago.

Republicans, shellacked by Mitt Romney’s 44-point loss among Latinos in the 2012 presidential election, almost immediately coalesced behind immigration reform as a top priority. The Gang of Eight got together last fall and recruited veterans of the 2007 immigration battle such as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), long-time champions of reform such as Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and high-wattage Senate newcomers, like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

If Congress passes immigration reform, it would make good on a promise from President Barack Obama and likely become his most significant policy achievement in his second term. In a statement, Obama emphasized that the bill was collaborative effort.

( PHOTOS: Pols react to immigration deal)

“The bipartisan bill that passed today was a compromise,” Obama said. “By definition, nobody got everything they wanted. Not Democrats. Not Republicans. Not me. But the Senate bill is consistent with the key principles for commonsense reform that I – and many others – have repeatedly laid out.”

He called on the House to act and emphasized to supporters that the fight is not over. “Now is the time when opponents will try their hardest to pull this bipartisan effort apart so they can stop commonsense reform from becoming a reality. We cannot let that happen,” Obama said.

The Gang of Eight bill would essentially revamp every corner of U.S. immigration law, establishing a 13-year pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants, with several security benchmarks that have to be met before they can obtain a green card. The measure would not only increases security along the border, but requires a mandatory workplace verification system for employers, trying to ensure no jobs are given to immigrants who are not authorized to work in the United States.

( PHOTOS: 10 wild immigration quotes)

It also includes a new visa program for lesser-skilled workers – the product of negotiations between the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and labor unions. And it shifts the country’s immigration policies away from a family-based system to one that is focused on more on work skills.

In another marked change from the failed 2007 effort, no Democrats voted against the immigration bill on Thursday. Six years ago, 15 Senate Democrats did.

This year, all five Senate Republican leaders rejected the bill, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) saying he didn’t believe there was sufficient border-security measures to stem future illegal immigration.

The late afternoon vote in the Senate had much pomp and circumstance. Senators voted from their desks, a practice usually saved for historic pieces of legislation. Vice President Joe Biden arrived from the White House to preside. And dozens of young activists wearing shirts that said “11 Million Dreams” filled the Senate gallery, watching the last hours of floor debate.

( PHOTOS: 20 quotes on immigration reform)

They broke out in chants of “Yes we can,” after the final vote count was announced, despite being warned by Biden in advance to stay quiet.

Before the final vote, the legislation’s chief authors took turns defending the bill and reflecting on the hard-fought path toward reform. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) spoke of the ups and down of his 12-year fight on behalf of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. And Rubio detailed the journey of his parents as they emigrated from Cuba.

“Here in America, generations of unfulfilled dreams will finally come to pass,” Rubio said on the Senate floor. “That’s why support this reform.”

The legislation easily cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee in late May, earning the support of three Republicans and all Democrats after a marathon markup that left the core elements of the legislation mostly intact. An eleventh-hour effort to attach a provision extending immigration rights to gay couples was the main drama in the committee – an intraparty dilemma for Democrats that wasn’t resolved until this week, when the Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act.

But the bill’s legislative route became more complicated once it moved to the full Senate. Republicans, as well as conservative Democrats, insisted on more border security measures to win their support. Their biggest advocate was Rubio, who signaled he could not support his own bill until its border security provisions were toughened up.

A breakthrough deal brokered by Republican Sens. Bob Corker of Tennessee and John Hoeven of North Dakota on a so-called “border surge” along the U.S.-Mexico boundary lured at least half a dozen Republican votes in favor of the bill, leaving little doubt that the legislation would have the minimum 60 votes needed to break a filibuster.

The agreement, which came on the heels of a Congressional Budget Office report that tallied nearly $900 billion in deficit savings over two decades, will add 20,000 border patrol agents, force the government to finish 700 miles of fencing and set aside billions of dollars for high-tech surveillance equipment.

“I believe that voting against this bill is voting against border security,” Corker said Thursday.

The Gang of Eight fell just short of an ambitious, 70-vote mark set by some of its members, who had believed a broad bipartisan majority would force the Republican-led House move on its bill. Last-minute efforts to lure Republican Sens. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Rob Portman of Ohio failed — negotiators viewed Chambliss’s demands as too onerous and Portman’s request for a vote on toughening E-Verify provisions got snagged in the procedural rules of the Senate.

“If they don’t get 70, it’s a strategic defeat for them,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told POLITICO shortly before the final vote. “Not because 68 is a whole lot different than 70, but because they were touting that they were going to get 70 votes and be able to shove it down the throats of the House of Representatives.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a member of the Gang of Eight, told reporters that the bill did not secure 70 votes because of “procedural shenanigans” that consumed the legislation’s final days in the chamber. Both parties scurried back and forth to strike a deal on amendments, but repeatedly faced objections.

Still, “I consider this an astounding success,” a jubilant Graham said Thursday. “You could ratify a treaty or override a veto. This is as good as it gets in the Senate.”

Schumer also brushed away notions that not reaching the 70-vote goal was a failure.

“We had always said we wanted a large, significant number of Republicans, we got them,” Schumer said at a news conference following the vote. “When we said 70, that was our utmost goal. We’re very, very happy with 68.”

But the conservative majority in the House is moving on a different track, passing separate pieces of legislation to revamp the nation’s immigration system. The House Judiciary Committee has cleared a handful of bills, but has yet to release any legislative solution for the estimated 11 million immigrants living illegally in the United States.

The GOP leadership in the House, as well as its conservative rank-and-file, have stressed repeatedly that the Senate bill faces almost certain death in the chamber.

“The House is not going to take up and vote on whatever the Senate passes,” Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) reemphasized on Thursday. “We’re going to do our own bill, through regular order, and it’ll be legislation that reflects the will of our majority and the will of the American people.”