Immigration reform advocates bet last chips on bipartisanship

Could a move toward bipartisanship in Washington, D.C. offer the last-ditch chance at immigration reform in 2010?

As I worked on an article about immigration and the Tea Party movement this week, I also picked up some information on the temperature in the capital regarding the chances of immigration legislation advancing this year, ahead of the November 2010 midterms.

The big hope for comprehensive reform advocates is that the wider effort by President Obama and Congressional leaders of both parties to find bipartisan common ground on front-burner issues like jobs will lead, down the line, to action on immigration too.

It is a “long-shot scenario,” said Tamar Jacoby, president of ImmigrationWorks USA, a pro-immigration reform business grouping, in a phone interview earlier this week.

“It will take Obama making some much more limited proposals,” she added, “if they manage to come together on other things then they can take on immigration.”

However Washington, D.C.’s latest lurch toward bipartisanship, started by Obama and Republicans’ recent question-and-answer session in Baltimore, seemed to hit a roadblock today.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) said that financial legislation had hit Republican resistance and that bipartisan efforts to hammer out a common bill might have to be scuttled. Democrats might again go at it alone.

Perhaps that’s the end of the most recent attempt to bring the two parties together. But if it isn’t, might immigration wiggle its way into any overlap between the Dems and the GOP?

Immigration reform advocates still rated the odds as being stacked high. But they pointed out that immigration reform has a long history as a bipartisan issue.

Ronald Reagan, after all, achieved the last major immigration reform, in 1986. That bill have a chance at citizenship to over 2 million immigrants. More recently, Sen. John McCain, in 2007, co-sponsored immigration reform that ultimately failed.

New York Sen. Charles Schumer, the Democrats’ point person on immigration reform in the U.S. Senate, is said to be preparing the ground for a bill despite the gloomy economy and the risk of a backlash from opponents of more liberal immigration policies.

There is already an immigration reform bill in the House introduced by Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.).

“Immigration has more potential to be bipartisan than almost any other issue on the legislative agenda,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of pro-immigration group America’s Voice, in a press release.

The release was meant to discount insider talk that immigration reform was “dead” after Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts and Obama’s tepid mention of the issue in the State of the Union address.

Cross post from New America Media